I grew up wanting to make movies, and along the way I suddenly found that I had a career doing comedy.
BEN STILLERI recently watched that Lucie Arnaz-produced documentary [Lucy and Desi: A Home Movie, 1992] about her parents [Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz], and I saw so much of my own childhood there.
More Ben Stiller Quotes
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When you have kids you want to be able to go to movies and take the family too, and actually all enjoy it together. I don’t think there are that many great, live action family movies that everybody can enjoy.
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I was a bad student. I liked archaeology actually, I was interested in maybe becoming an archaeologist but I was such a bad student and had such bad grades that I wasn’t going to get into any really good college so I fell back on acting.
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The cliches are that it’s the most generic Starsky and Hutch plot you can find.
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The failure of The Cable Guy impacted my career. I had to start writing and acting again.
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And I was like, “Yeah, anything. Twenty-four hours times five is 120 hours. Oh, great, I’ll fill 120 hours of my life with something.” So I did that and it was fun, and then I did Flirting with Disaster.
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All those rumors about her being underweight are trash. She’s [Calista Flockhart] gorgeous.
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When we were visiting New York City, I took my kids to the same playground where I went growing up. It was fun to feel that connection of having gone there as a kid and being there as a parent.
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There’s an old saying in Hollywood: It’s not the length of your film, it’s how you use it.
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I don’t even want to think of myself as an actor because it’s such an insecure place to go.
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I’m Jewish, but my mom’s Catholic, so the guilt area is covered. I have the highest expectations, along with the lowest. I tried to put as much of myself as possible in Reality Bites, but in terms of my humor, I’m still trying to figure out what my sensibility is. It’s a process, really.
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Very quickly after meeting Dustin, the whole image I had of him was shattered.
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I would like to do more dramas when I find a good role that will allow me to politely upset people’s expectations of me as a comic actor.
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As a kid I had dreams about being successful, thinking it would be cool. Then, when I was in my 20s, I really thought I had it much more figured out than I do now.
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I had two projects that fell apart during preproduction. The first one was this movie that Judd Apatow and I had written about two guys following the Rolling Stones. It was going to be half concert film, half pseudo-documentary.
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I don’t think know if anything’s going to translate anywhere. You’re making a movie, you hope it’s going to be funny, you can’t think about how it’s going to go over.
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I don’t devalue comedy as compared to drama. Not one bit.
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I don’t have a burning desire to be taken seriously as an actor. I don’t have a master plan in that way.
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It’s weird that people expect me to be funny. I find it a real burden when I’m expected to be humorous on talk shows.
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I studied Tom Cruise running in all the Mission Impossibles. I think he’s one of the best screen runners.
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My parents used to throw great New Year’s Eve parties. They invited such an eclectic mix of showbiz people. All those cool people were always hanging out at our apartment.
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Zoolander was more of my own sensibility.
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I was staying on [writer/director/actor] Eric Schaeffer’s couch in New York, and he said, “I’ve got this movie [If Lucy Fell]. Can you do five days on it?”
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Words can only hurt you if you try to read them. Don’t play their game!
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Nobody makes me bleed my own blood – nobody!
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I’m always willing to endure humiliation on behalf of my characters.
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I think the most serious genre is the thing you’re going to get the most out of. If you’re trying to satirise a comedy, it’s hard to do that – it doesn’t really work as well. But I love the war movie genre and I’m a fan of all those movies that are part of what this movie is.
BEN STILLER