I recognize that Hollywood is not about seniority. Often it’s not even a meritocracy. It’s about what you did yesterday. You have a couple of misses, and suddenly it’s impossible to find a hit. So the swings are gigantic. But I’ve always understood it as such, and navigated it as such.
Every single director-actor I talked to, from Warren Beatty to Clint Eastwood to George Clooney, said the biggest mistake they made is not shooting enough footage of themselves.
Sure, I suffered a lot. But it’s not like the end of the world and it’s not who I am. I lead quite a pleasant life and I’m able to divorce a perceived reality from my actual experience of life.
A sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some stock or he sells you a reason he can’t. Either way a sale is made, the only question is: Who is gonna close?
When you hire great actors, you’re lucky, so you just try to create an atmosphere where they can succeed and relax and take risks. You’re happy that you get to watch them at the monitor and that your name is on the director’s chair.
People decided that I was the frat guy, even though I’ve never been inside a fraternity, or the guy who beat them up at school, even though that wasn’t me at all.
No actor forgets the times he couldn’t get a job. I think everyone doing this operates from that fear. You don’t want that momentum to stop when you get it.
