Casey Affleck

“I knew it would be hard work, but that's the reason you're an actor. If you're a bricklayer, you don't want to just show up at someone's house and put a little row of bricks around their garden. You want to build a building.”

“Why can't people just say they were moved? Why do they have to say it's sappy?”

“When other people say, 'Oh you're so-and-so's friend, brother, or husband,' it's reductive to the point of being white noise.”

“I love getting ready to do a scene, and thinking about it, and talking about it. But the rest of the time, I'm so nervous and obsessed. I'm just tearing my hair out in the trailer. The whole time I'm really tense.”

“In New York, as long as you're not peeing in someone's doorway, everyone thinks you're a gentleman. I feel like my behavior goes over better on the streets of New York.”

“For people who have... had curve balls thrown at them, it is easier to digest change and digest change in other people. Change only scares the small-minded. The small-minded and me.”

“Part of the criteria for doing a project is that it's scary or challenging because at some point you go, 'It's too scary; it's too challenging. I don't want to do it.' But things that seem easy are never any fun.”

“Most of my acting jobs have resulted in a series of mortifying revelations spread over years and years following the shoot.”

“I think there's a certain amount of pressure depending on how demanding the part is, depending on how great the material is. I feel a certain amount of pressure to rise to the occasion.”

“I have friends who remember seeing fish hauled onto a boat's deck and beaten to death.”

“The four movies I can remember seeing as a kid were 'The Elephant Man,' 'The Magnificent Seven,' 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' and 'Mad Max!' Two of those are westerns. So the western genre is emblazoned on my memory from childhood, and those are two great movies.”

“Truth is, there's never really been anything so horrible said about me that I haven't either thought of or said to myself.”

“The idea of someone not liking me or not liking my movie was always easier to deal with than someone really liking it. I don't know why.”

“Talking to other people about a part is not helpful for me. It's such an internal and complicated and still kind of mysterious process.”

“I was 14 years old when my dad went into rehab, and he stayed there for a long time - I don't know, 10 or 12 years maybe. He first was there as a resident, as someone trying to get sober, and it took a long time; and then he stayed on helping people get their GED.”

“When I like someone a lot, I get scared that I'll let them down. My fear of sucking is worst when I feel like someone thinks I'm good.”

“In my movies, there has been little to do in the way of animal rights. I have never worked in a movie with animals. No horse-riding, no trained dogs, lions, bears. A few actors, but what could I do? We had to have them.”

“Some people go to their job. That's the job they have; they have to do it. They hate their boss and their coworkers, this and that. It's hard to get along.”

“We obsess about celebrities. We create them, build myths around them, and then hunt them and destroy them. I don't know where it's taking us or what it means, but I know we do it. I have seen a lot of it myself.”

“Celebrity never really served me that well; it serves other people well.”