Kiefer Sutherland Quotes

I think just in general there's a bunch of films that mattered to me that didn't reach their potential, and on some level you have to assume responsibility for that. And I think over the years that gets difficult.

I am a bit obsessive about tidiness. I need to make my bed in the morning and leave it perfectly made up.

Most of my career I've spent really nervous. Just about work, getting work and having it in.

The biggest mistakes I made in my career were when I said, 'If I do this movie, I'll be able to do a couple more movies.' Those are the times I really got ugly.

There are a lot of movies I'd like to throw away. That's not to say that I went in with that attitude. Any film I ever started, I went in with all the hope and best intentions in the world, but some films just don't work.

Isn't it funny? You hear a phone ring and it could be anybody. But, a ringing phone has to be answered doesn't it?

There are certain moments that you have to hit in a film, like when a character cries.

I wasn't trying to do a play or do what Kevin Spacey did. I was trying to do my own thing.

My mother's five-foot-two, and I'll be honest with you - she's the only person I'm scared of.

My whole mood or sense can change by virtue of the music that I'm listening to. It really does affect me on a visceral and emotional level.

I've made films that I've given all I had to, that no one has seen. The bottom line is I want to work and I want someone to enjoy it.

I think the father-son dynamic is interesting. I don't have a male friend who hasn't had some kind of conflict with their dad, and I don't have a male friend who hasn't had some kind of conflict with their son.

I did a play called Throne of Straw when I was 11, at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles. It became really clear to me at that point that I enjoyed acting more than any other experience I was having.

When I started, with films like 'The Bay Boy' and 'Stand by Me', I look back on those interviews and I'm amazed; there's no mention of my father; it's not even 'son of Donald Sutherland.' I caught a bit of a break in that it never felt like a weight to me.

I think one of the things I was most interested in finding out was how differently we approached our work. And my reality was that we didn't approach it very differently at all, which was funny.

Yes, I do believe that there is a cause and effect and a ripple effect upon everything everybody does, and they have positive consequences and negative consequences. If you start to focus on the kind of minutia of that, it's really quite extraordinary.

One of the big draws of the show is here's a guy who is ordinary in a lot of ways but, due to his profession, he's placed in extraordinary situations that he has to make right with action and with thought. That's what is appealing about Jack - he takes charge.

I think that the day you've figured out the differences between women and men is the day that you're no longer attracted to women. It's the difference that is so fantastic and frustrating and angering, and really sexy.

The writers keep managing to turn the show in on itself, coming up with something that's well thought-out and miraculous.

I was 20 when my daughter was born, and making all these plans during my wife's pregnancy. I was going to be the perfect father. Once she was born, it was suddenly, 'Oh, my God! I'm a parent!'

You know, I wish I wasn't so young when I made some of my movies, because I thought that's what the rest of my life was going to be like and I'd have all the time in the world to enjoy it. It wasn't and I didn't.

When we shoot 24, there are so many things I have to worry about, from the script to technical things to my performance, that I don't have a second to be bored or take anything for granted. We produce 24 hours of film a season, which is like making 12 movies.

I just always liked the company. The people who hung around her were amazing storytellers, whether it was actors or crew. They were just exciting people. And I knew that they were different when I would go see a friend or stay at someone else's house. It just wasn't as cool. So I always loved the theater, and that's where I started: at a theater up in Canada.

When you're a young actor you like to go for characters with a bit of flair, so in many films I ended up playing the weirdos. I can assure you I'm not a psycho or a criminal or a bully.

If your ethics in the military, in your training, is going to be counterminded by a one-hour weekly television show, we've got a really big problem.

People respond to a guy who is trapped and succeeds on some level and fails on another.

I do believe very strongly that all of us and all of the other things in the context of our planet with Mother Nature, all of these things absolutely have a profound effect.

I think the most attractive thing is a sense of humour. If someone can make you laugh, you've gotten a lot out of the way.

I'm a huge fan of Canadian rock-and-roll. When I was growing up, Rush came out with a record called Hemispheres, and I must have listened to that record for two years straight. Even when I was asleep I had it on. So, yeah, whenever I hear a Rush tune, the first thing I think of is Toronto.

When Julia and I broke up and I was really scared to go into a market or anywhere because I thought, 'Oh God, everyone must hate me. And that wasn't the case. People said, 'I'm sorry this happened, man. Are you alright?'

The most significant piece of advice my father gave me early on about acting was, don't get caught acting. Really believe in what you're doing and then commit to it. Even if it feels uncomfortable, even if you feel that you're gonna look like an ass. It's all acting, but find the truth in a moment as opposed to just pretending you have and rather than trying to act your way out of it.

You can't ask the press to service you with everything that they have and not expect some of the other stuff in return if you're going to live your life like I have.

There's a confidence that comes from youth and not knowing better. But there comes a point, as an actor, when you do know better, and that is when the fear starts.

My focus on 9/11 was on the victims - in the towers, in the planes - and all that loss.

I loved '24', but I didn't think anyone else would. I had absolutely no idea.

I've always been shocked that people that I'm actually flying with say, 'Oh, I feel safer on the plane with you.' I'm thinking, 'You must not watch the show because everybody around me gets killed.'

When I saw Virginia Woolf, somewhere between the first and second acts, someone I had known as my mother became somebody else.

Some people think it's because '24' was jump-started by what happened on 9/11. That was never why we made the show. We started production six months prior to 9/11, and we'd already done ten episodes.

I liked the ceremony, the ritual of preparing cocaine, as much as doing it. I did it for a year, loved it, then stopped. Now I feel the same way about cooking.

When I wasn't the flavor of the week or month or day, those were hard times.

There are two things that Jack Bauer never does. Show mercy, and go to the bathroom.

Romania is an interesting place because I think it has been abused, on so many different levels.

I remember being really grateful that David Lynch had actually even thought of casting me, because I was a huge fan of his.

Westerns just thematically, as a genre, have kind of a few tent poles that I really admire, and one of them is this perception that life was simpler back then. And with that perception goes that people were good or people were bad. You survived by your strengths or you perished by your weaknesses.

If you are going to do something potentially for another eight years, you want it to be something that you can really sink your teeth in and that's going to be different and interesting for this next period of time.

I feel extraordinarily peaceful when I'm watching the sun set.

There are aspects of '24' where I love its politics and aspects where I hate them.

I would love to do '24' until I was 60, but I don't think anybody would accept it.

When I was younger, my whole sense of self-worth was based on whether or not I was working, which was awful. And I had a baby at 20 years old, so it wasn't just about me. At around the age of 30 there was a stretch where I wasn't working - certainly not on anything I liked, anyway - and I started to do other things.

Love is a self-manifested notion depending on how lonely you are - so if you're really attracted to someone, and you're really lonely, I think you can fall in love in an instant. It's all about where you're at.

I had never gone to college, I left school at a really early age, and all of a sudden I've got six really great friends hanging out with me every night. And we were a really tight group, and we just had an absolute blast.

Commander I believe in God and his son Jesus Christ and because I do I can say this. Private Santiago is dead and that is a tragedy. But he is dead because he had no code. He is dead because he had no honor. And God was watching.