Chris Eigeman

“It was always theater for me. But part of that came out of the fact that I was always acting out as a kid. I was the kid who didn't play well with others.”

“I had a very misguided notion of what 'network notes' were. I thought they were well-meant suggestions, perhaps urgently meant, but just suggestions nonetheless. And actually, they're demands. You have to do them, or you will not be paid.”

“I like a no-drama set. I welcome visitors by and large; I like music playing on sets between set-ups - all that stuff.”

“I took a cabbie to taxi court once. Years ago, this guy didn't want to take me to Brooklyn. Just refused. I explained that I would absolutely take him to Taxi Court because, see, I'm an actor and have pretty much nothing but free time.”

“I was going to be in an acting school in London, and then I promptly got thrown out of an acting school in London. Well, it wasn't that I got thrown out as much as I was not invited back, which is the same thing, just more polite.”

“The scariest film in the world is 'Rosemary's Baby.'”

“I picture Generation X as young adults living in a state of perpetual adolescence.”

“My mom and dad got divorced, so it was one of those things where Sundays I'd go to Dad's apartment, and this was, say, 1970-whatever, and it had a pool table on the top floor in a very traditional kind of divorced-dad apartment building.”

“I'm a Jesuit when it comes to structure, but I really think that structure is defined by character. Everything serves that master.”

“I grew up in Colorado and spent my summers in Montana as a ranch hand.”

“Being an actor started me writing, and that led to directing.”

“If you take a perfectly well-adjusted normal person of any age from anywhere in the country and stick them in L.A., within about a week I do believe that a lot of their values and morals will start to degrade.”

“Musically, swing pretty much dominated in the '30s. And into the late '30s, swing is beginning to change over to bebop in the early '40s, which is exactly when this new science of theoretical physics, particularly theoretical atomic physics, was really coming to the fore.”

“Even though I am in my mid-40s, I live like I am in my mid-20s.”

“One day I'm lugging walls back and forth in Louisville, and the next day I'm at Cannes giving interviews next to Ben Kingsley. I'm nowhere near cynical or jaded enough not to be incredibly thrilled by that.”

“I think, basically, I am an actor. Sometimes I'm an actor who's writing and sometimes an actor who's directing, but I think if I'm forced to fill out a form for my tax return, 'actor' is the first thing I write down.”

“If I can feel that actual people made the thing, and that they have deeply felt opinions about it, and care about this, and don't care about that and so on and so on - then I think it falls into the 'independent' file.”

“I never thought about movies. I never thought about Hollywood. It was just being on the stage and being in New York.”

“There's that great thing about acting - you're wearing your heart on your sleeve, and you're speaking off the cuff. You know, you're fearless about it, and - and it's great. And I love it.”

“After my first movie was released, my wife and I went Bouley. A fantastic meal. The whole thing, getting dressed up, acting very adult-y, a lot of fun.”