James Spader Quotes

I'm not eager at all to present my life out there for public consumption. I like to do one or two films a year and then do what is absolutely obligatory in terms of promoting them. My life outside of films is vital to me.

Every film you work on is different, and that's part of what it's like for anybody who works on a film, is to learn how to work with others. Learn from top to bottom. Actors have to learn how to work with the director and the director has to learn how to work with actors, and that's not just those two departments.

I'd like to thank the academy and I'd like to thank my mother and I'd like to thank my mother again, because I forgot to thank her last year.

It can never, ever, ever get weird enough for me.

Working in theater, film or television are three different jobs for an actor, and I accept them as such.

It's necessary to readjust and then try again. And then readjust and try again. Fathers have to do that with sons and mothers have to do that with daughters. The level of readjustment isn't quite so much when fathers are dealing with daughters and mothers are dealing with sons.

The first perk of theater is the girls.

For me, when working on a film or play or television show, everything for me starts with the screenplay and I am devoted to that and that is what I work from. Any research I do or any preparation I do on my own is all ultimately in service of that.

Acting is a great way to make a living, especially when I consider what my alternatives were and probably still are. I mean, you are only making movies. It is a lot less pressure than being a surgeon; although it seemed like the only other thing that I was qualified for was manual labour.

Acting is easy and fun. You earn a lot of money, and you bang out with girls. The profession is given tremendous significance within our society, but it's not really worthy of it.

The script is the coloring book that you're given, and your job is to figure out how to color it in. And also when and where to color outside the lines.

I look for things that are very different from my life, and that are curious and idiosyncratic to me. And then, I like to find if I'm able, just a little bit, to step into a world that I know very little about. That's great fun.

If I don't need the money, I don't work.

I think also there's no question that Lincoln has been diluted down through history in some way, almost by becoming as iconic as he is, in a way he's become diluted.

I lost interest in firearms because we had a dog that was scared to death of the sound of a rifle shot.

Love is the one emotion actors allow themselves to believe.

If I don't need the money, I don't work. I'm going to spend time with my family and friends, and I'm going to travel and read and listen to music and try to learn a little bit more about how to be a human being, as opposed to learning how to be somebody else.

You know, when you choose to make your living as an actor, it's all fine and good to look at it as some kind of artistic endeavor. At its best, it is that. But the fact is, most of the actors out there don't earn $3 million a picture and can't afford to take two years off between films and look for the right thing. Most of us are tradesmen.

I think that Barack Obama faces a level of divisiveness, and I don't mean on a national level in terms of the North and the South and the Civil War; I really mean just politically.

Growing up, I didn't have any comic books, at all. But my friend had a trunk full of them, so comic books were like candy for me. I would go over to his house for a sleep-over, and I would just be devouring everything I could get my hands on. I knew the sleep-over was going to be over, and I was going to go back to my house and it was going to be Kipling.

The first perk of theatre is the girls.

I played cops and robbers and pirates and all the rest when I was a kid, but I didn't want to grow up and be an actor and play cops and robbers and pirates. I wanted to grow up and be that, be cops and robbers and pirates.

I've had a lazy career. Sometimes one film a year, sometimes none. I'm walking around in the street and doing this other thing, living, that I'm much more interested in. I just do some acting on the side.

I don't think movies or television have any basis in reality at all. It's all just pretend. That's what's fun about it.