Quotes About Hollywood

I didn't go Hollywood on the outside with flashy cars, upstairs maids and mink covered bathroom fixtures. I went Hollywood on the inside and that's worst of all. I tried to avoid being natural. I lowered my voice. I copied the mannerisms of other stars. I struck poses. I received bad advice - from dramatic coaches, from agents, and from studio executives. I stopped being a human being. I blame myself and I blame Hollywood's star system.

There was a part of me that felt afraid of people in Hollywood going: '**** Hollywood with their total lack of originality!'.

I leave Hollywood, I go somewhere else and make some music, and then, when I have to go back to work, I try and take as much that I get from outside Hollywood back with me.

Rome is magic, it's like being in Hollywood. But the difference between Hollywood and Rome is that here you don't have just the movie business. The movie business is so little, so you also have the choice to hang out with people who do different kinds of business.

I'm not criticizing Hollywood because I work there, I partly live there. But I'm saying this is the way it is, commerce is taking over art. Commerce has become the most important thing in the film industry. Hollywood is an industry, it's not an art form, therefore they have to address the bottom line. But in a way it's sad when you get a remake, isn't it?

Sure, I watched a lot of Hollywood movies. Maybe I've seen more Hollywood movies than French movies

I appreciate it if I make a Chinese film. And if there is an opportunity to make a Hollywood film, I will take it - especially because, as you probably know, in Hollywood, even today, there are not a lot of big roles for Asian performers. So it is a great opportunity. It is possible to make films that people everywhere enjoy. I travel quite a lot. I don't really feel like when I am in China, I am a Chinese person and when I'm here, I'm a foreigner. I don't feel that kind of difference anymore. In the past I did. Not anymore. I feel quite at home everywhere. The whole world is my home.

I think Hollywood is incredibly segregated. I've never seen any place like it. The gatekeepers who are the most progressive activists inspired to make the world better... they're better people, right? They're segregated. It's self segregated in some cases, but there's nobody Black in charge of anything in Hollywood.

North Hollywood isn't actually Hollywood, it's in the San Fernando Valley... it's not the most glamorous part of L.A.

I have no interest in changing Hollywood. Hollywood is a place so consumed by the spirit of the world that I don't even want to try to think about how to infiltrate that.

Like in [the 1950s] if you wanted to ruin someone´s career in Hollywood you claimed he was a Communist. Nowadays, you want to ruin someone´s career in Hollywood, you claim they are Republican.

In fact, I think new media is going to make a big difference with injecting more people of color into Hollywood and non-Hollywood.

If women ran Hollywood, The Hollywood Reporter would have a "Men in Entertainment" issue every year, and those jerks would have to write something.

Working in Hollywood, it's clear the more money you have, the more technology you can get. So you can build a whole Japanese set. Only in Hollywood!

My grandmother and I followed my mother here, to a house a block north of Hollywood Boulevard but a million miles away from Hollywood, if you know what I mean. We would hang out behind the ropes and look at the movie stars arriving at the premieres.

Hollywood is a goofy place. But I like it.... If one weren't a little mad one wouldn't be there.

There are challenges as far as underfunding in various parts of the city. But spirit and sense of community is so much stronger in the places we've been. In Hollywood and Beverly Hills for example, people stay to themselves and live away from others in their gated communities. Despite being a native West Angelino, I had never really felt a strong sense of community until "South Of Wilshire". I now feel it because of the show.

I do not make films which are prescriptive, and I do not make films that are conclusive. You do not walk out of my films with a clear feeling about what is right and wrong. They're ambivalent. You walk away with work to do. My films are a sort of investigation. They ask questions . . .. Sometimes I hear that some [Hollywood] studio is interested in me. Then they discover that this is the guy who works with no script, that there is no casting discussion, no interference, that I have the final cut, and that does it.

From a young age, [James Baldwin] was watching all those different films. He's watching John Wayne killing off the Indians. He came to the point that the Indians were him. You had to educate yourself because the movies were not educating you. The movies were giving you a reflection of you that was not the truth. That's the trick. The movie was also giving a reflection of what the country is. Basically, a country that wanted itself to be innocent. That's the ambivalence of Hollywood.

I was very young, maybe five. The opera was very... I was attracted to opera to the point that I think it's the reason I started to write music for films. I never studied. There are film and music school that teach you how to write music. I never studied that. But the influence of opera, which is a combination of storyline, visuals, staging, plus music... that was perhaps the best school I could have had. That's what gave me the idea of coming to Hollywood to write music for films.

Most of the successful people in Hollywood are failures as human beings.

Hollywood is like high school, there are always going to be people who hate you and people who like you. When you're a teen, [that's tough] because you're hyper-aware of what other people are gonna say and think. But neither defines who you are as a person or how successful you are unless you let them.

Like the tectonic plate it sits upon, Hollywood is subject to seismic jolts and constant tremors. Each season erupts with a new champion, and every so often a genuine earthquake will tear down the apparently secure infrastructure.

I was inspired by Maya Deren because she was the first woman filmmaker whose films I saw. I also loved Fellini and Goddard because they were so different from Hollywood films. But when I saw the cinema verite films that were made by Drew Associates with Leacock and Pennebaker I found my passion.

I dont know that I want to act 15 years from now. I mean, I love the process of acting, but not the masochism. No matter how successful you get in Hollywood, you cannot rest. Your new movie doesn't open well; they're looking for the next person to replace you; it's always something. You never have true peace.

I look at going to Hollywood as going behind enemy lines. You parachute in, set up the explosion, then fly out before it goes off.

Hollywood's always saying, "Yesterday!" and scares you to death with all that deadline and yelling and impatience stuff.

If you purposefully look to shock people, it isn't funny. That's what 50 million dollar Hollywood comedies do; try to be shocking and dirty. They aren't really. It isn't enough to shock. It's easy to shock. Real surprise is what I'm after. Those early movies, we had drugs, which you weren't supposed to show. You weren't supposed to shoot up. We would make fun of hippies. I think that we were punk before there was punk.

I think the form, the Hollywood movie, I think the quality is obviously always going to be there and I think that the question of taste, there's always a question of taste.

In Hollywood you kind of fail upwards

Many of us had this idea of doing independent film, of making personal, relevant films, as opposed to Hollywood fluff. I directed a few.

There is a misperception, if you will, in critical response or even in Hollywood, that I can only do exaggerated characters. Or what they would call over-the-top performances. Well, this is completely false.

Fame doesn't matter. Money doesn't matter. Those things are forever fleeting. I just want to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, so that when I'm long gone my great-great-grandchildren can walk up to it and say, "That's my ancestor." That will be my legacy.

In Hollywood, there is another name for a woman's 40th birthday party, it's a retirement party.

There are definitely roles within this industry that are industry-related, but to be a good actor, you really have to want to act first. At the same time, my goal was never to go to Hollywood to make movies. I think if you come here with that attitude, then you've missed a few steps.

I was just excited by the whole prospect of working in a television series in Hollywood. I had never anticipated that as an actor I would ever end up here. It may be some sort of fantasy I'd thought about from time to time, but it was completely unrealistic.

My attitude about Hollywood is that I wouldn't walk across the street to pull one of those executives out of the snow if he was bleeding to death. Not unless I was paid for it. None of them ever did me any favors.

I just feel lucky to have grown up where I did because I think it gave me a nice base. Hollywood can really mess with your sense of self and I feel like coming from the South keeps me pretty grounded.

Hollywood is full of very liberal people, but it still has an infrastructure that needs to be broken.

I don't do divas. I don't do entourages. I don't do the Hollywood crap.

Catherine Zeta-Jones started out like me. Her big break in Hollywood was in 'Zorro.'

I think that's one of the great things about the travel. One day I am at home in Sheffield, the next day I'm playing the Hollywood Bowl. It's extraordinary.

After my years in Hollywood, I got tired of apologizing for work that really wasn't mine to begin with.

D.C. is known as Hollywood for ugly people.

I think Hollywood has always, you know, there's always been glamour associated to it. And especially in the last ten years there has been a growing sort of obsession with celebrity life and celebrity culture.

I also read about Heathcliff's unexpected three-year career in Hollywood under the name Buck Stallion and his eventual return to the pages of Wuthering Heights.

The Hollywood culture is so invasive, and I definitely wanted to be near it eventually.

I'm just really excited to promote the movie [I know The Chair ] and the show in a different way, and not just the typical Hollywood way, which I don't think I'll ever fit into.