Jason Bateman

“I'm not talented enough to drop everything and become somebody different.”

“You do certain things in your twenties that are just not appropriate in your thirties and certainly not appropriate in your forties. Eventually you even the scales, and it's time to move on and become an adult and start working hard again and going to sleep a little bit earlier. Fortunately, I got a job to facilitate that transition.”

“People like Bill Murray are incredible at what they do and are definitely my flavour. Although Will Ferrell, Sacha Baron Cohen and Ricky Gervais are also incredible actors. In their comedy, they make these stupid people feel so real. These guys are really setting the bar very high, and I learn as much from them about acting as I do about comedy.”

“I'd much rather have the freedom, and the obligation to use it responsibly, than be put in a box.”

“I was very surprised to get a reading for 'Arrested Development' because it really seemed to be the opposite of that which I was known for doing.”

“I really enjoy playing that everyman part because that part is us, the audience. And you need somebody inside a comedy to tether the absurdity to reality.”

“I wasn't really interested in doing anything except going from pilot season to pilot season and sowing my oats in the months between and telling my agency to stop sending me movie scripts, because they'd pile up in my house and make me feel guilty because I had to read them.”

“I feel incredibly fortunate I walked away, took care of other business, and then came back to show business.”

“The people at Netflix are extremely intelligent about the way they monitor activity on their platform.”

“To have the privileged position of being the guy who is responsible for shaping the entire experience for an audience as opposed to being just one instrument in that orchestra, being an actor, it's all-encompassing.”

“Directing films is incredibly exciting to me.”

“In most professions, if you stay at the office an extra four hours every day, you're gonna impress the boss. You're gonna get that promotion; you're gonna get that raise. You're gonna at least have job security. But with acting, if you're really ambitious and you have a good work ethic and are really good at your job, it might not really matter.”

“When you're playing a supporting character, you don't really have a lot of control of the quality of the film.”

“That's kind of the fun part about acting. We do get the right to kind of get from A to Z any way we want, as long as we start at A and end at Z.”

“My mother is British; she's from Shrewsbury. She turned me onto 'Monty Python' very early.”