William H. Macy Quotes

At the end of the day, what actors really want to do is act a lot and not wait around in the trailer.

I think I've been in situations where they looked at me and just see some rich white guy - they don't see me at all.

I do love comedy, but I'm not brave enough to tackle a script whose goal is to make you laugh. That's tough. The ones that can do it, I tip my hat off to them, but I don't have that kind of humor or mind.

The best thing for an actor to do is take your attention off of how you feel about it, and put it on striving to obtain a particular objective. The happy result is that it brings out all this unexpected stuff in yourself.

I love women. I always have. I'm not pretending that I understand them, but I just love women. I love being in their presence and I love everything about them.

I'm really proud of the writing on Door to Door, and I think that's the Emmy that meant the most - the writing.

You'd much rather act with a pal, someone you know really well. That way, you can cut all the niceties and go right to insulting each other.

When I was in New York, I was making a living. We had a summer house and a car that I could put in a garage. That's something for a stage actor.

Sometimes, directors are afraid to stop shooting, because the second you stop and say, "We got it," and move on, you'll never get another chance. And they're terrified to get in the cutting room and not be happy. So they just keep shooting.

If I had my choice, I would do the same little independent films, but they would have $100 million budgets, so I could get paid a fortune and hang out in a huge trailer.

When a director makes a mistake, people suffer. People suffer horribly sometimes.

Ultimately, a more experienced director realizes that you've got to stop sometime and just move on. They're braver about that.

Perhaps there is such a thing as obscene sex, but I know that violence is always obscene. So I don't get it, that you can disembowel a woman but you can't see her tits. Who made that up? That's sick!

I've studied Stanislavsky, and Mamet taught Stanislavsky, and I studied with Sanford Meisner. But the part of the method that I think is the most fruitful is the method of physical actions. It all comes down to your objective: Nothing else counts except what you want. How you feel will take care of itself.

Here are the good things about independent films: They do the more interesting, chancy scripts. They're run by love.

I've got two little girls, I'm not scared about sex. I'll teach them, it's not going to kill them. But what could kill them is violence. Guns, drinking and driving, these are the real dangers in our society.

Emotions are the natural result of striving for something. Every single scene has two or more people in it, and nobody wants the same thing, so they are negotiating this one way or another. The result of that negotiation will bring out all kinds of emotional stuff in you.

I'm not much of a preparer. I think sometimes as an actor you need to go out and learn some skills, but in terms of preparation for understanding the character, it's all on the page, and if it's not on the page, you're in trouble.

We must admit that it is quite common that people do have affairs with their leading ladies and men.

The actor has the advantage - or the liability - of knowing, "It's going to be my face up there on the frickin' screen, so I better keep my wits about me. Nobody's going to care that I was bad because I was not happy. They're only going to know I'm bad."