Jason Bateman Quotations

By definition, gay is smart. I see plenty of macho heterosexual idiots, but nine times out of 10 you can have a great conversation if you find a gay guy.

I love a massage. I'd go every day if I could. I don't need to be wrapped in herbs like a salmon fillet, but I do love a massage.

Tony Hale is a devout Christian and is a complete retard when it comes to swearing. The script called for him to swear for about 30 seconds and he just couldn't do it.

If I'm enjoying something, I'd like to be able to just have it all. Frankly, that's the way I'm approaching my career now. I'm a total workaholic.

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 don't worry about people misinterpreting my kindness for weakness.

My goal is to get another 30 years out of this business. So I need to figure out the fuel to do that. And so far, I think it's respect and quality and company, not celebrity or box office or stardom. It's not a sprinter's approach. It's more like a long-distance thing. You can stick around a lot longer if you kind of slow-play it.

And I've always loved commercials. I like working out how to organically weave a brand's message into the writing process. It's like an improv show, where comics ask the audience to throw out a word and a skit is built around it.

Acting is just playing the violin in an orchestra. Directing is being the conductor.

Things are going better now than ever, but in 24 months? I could be hearing crickets.

I don't have anything to fix! I don't smoke, I don't drink, and I don't eat carbs. My life is just great now. Normal. Vanilla.

I'd worked so hard that by the time I was 20, I wanted to play hard. And I did that really well.

Starting at age 10, my personality and my identity all stemmed from employment. I had a set to be at. I was a certain way with the cameraman, a certain way with the makeup lady - a normal, routine environment.

My life is just great now. Normal. Vanilla.

The comedy community is very friendly right now. I think that's why you see all the synergy and people doing each other's movies.

I only wanted to get married once, so when I felt I was ready to handle it, I looked at my relationships and noticed that boyfriends get tired of girlfriends, and vice versa, but you never get tired of your friends.

I think anybody who's doing work in their teen years on TV or in the movies, you're a teen idol by default.

I have a tendency to evolve into William Shatner, with my big fat face.

I was just a lot smarter about not getting caught. I mean, I never stuck anything in my arm, but I certainly enjoyed my youth.

A straight factor is important in any comedy, because you need something to tee it up and also to ground it.

I became an adult before I had a kid, which I highly recommend. I just like to throw her around. She's a really good snuggler, and she likes to give kisses and hugs.

I never looked at fan mail, for some reason. My mother and grandmother handled my mail - although it's not like I was ever in the stratosphere of Kirk Cameron or Scott Baio.

I have to warn you: I bet horses like a girl.

I played a ton of team sports growing up, and team wins are just incredibly gratifying.

Guys like Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Sacha Baron Cohen, they do things you love to watch. I like to do the other half.

Throughout my 20s I spent a lot of time just playing and not really working, but fortunately for me I continued to get just enough work, and have a reason to wake up in the morning. I really empathize with some of my peers who had success in the early years then it dries up, and so there's no reason to get up in the morning.

I like being hired to do more and more stuff. Carry more and more responsibility. It's nice I'm getting that trust.

I did a good bit of episodic television directing, but directing a movie is so much more complicated. And there's so much more responsibility because the medium is very much a director's medium. Television is much more of a producer's writer's medium so a lot of the time when you're directing a television show they have a color palette on set or a visual style and dynamic that's already been predetermined and you just kind of have to follow the rules.

The longer you stay in the job that you do the more you learn about what those around you do. As an actor I've always nosed around apologetically about: "oh wouldn't it be interesting if I could do that?" I can't imagine not wanting to do this everyday.

Our job, as actors, is to just try to be as accurate and as mindful of what the audience is going through and receiving and processing. If it's a situation where the character should look a little bit out of control or do something stupid, it's your job to act into that, in a believable way.

I don't get a chance to cry that often on film, so I was hoping that talent would come my way, that day. I cheated, I guess, when I just started looking at my technology device - my iPhone - to look at pictures of my kids, before I did the scene where I had to cry. That was a good trick that I found.

I don't really find a problem with technology or television, or anything. I'm a product of it. I grew up watching TV, and I don't think I'm too dumb or too crazy.

I can be on a telephone call, and be emailing or texting somebody else, as well. I would imagine everyone appreciates that efficiency of communication. I see it as a huge positive.

Improvisation, for me, is when the cameras start rolling, we don't know where we're going and let's just waste people's time and money.

I remember my dad working with me on breaking down my script and writing out a back story for my character and all that stuff.

As an actor, you get hired for what you last did. And I guess it just becomes your choice or obligation to do different things.

I would rather do three or four small parts every year as opposed to some of the lower-hanging fruit that might get my name above the title.

There are worse things than being constantly hired to do anything.

I'm in a little bit of a different situation, because working in the business that I do and living in the city that I live in, I haven't had a problem with people who are gay. Since I was 10 I've been working alongside them, and some of my best friends are gay.

Will Arnett is one of the funniest guys I know. He has seen it all and done it all and come out the other end pretty savvy and pretty strong.

I've always felt bad that I never had more information to give people when they asked me about it, but I guess people kind of got frustrated by that and they just started kind of making up their own sort of "well, we haven't heard that much" or "news hasn't changed so it must be going away".

If people are going to complain about stereotyping, it's as likely to be Italian-Americans as gay people.

It takes some intelligence and insight to figure out you're gay and then a tremendous amount of balls to live it and live it proudly.

It is one of the few elements in the process that a director really, really can't control: an actor's performance. If you have a director that understands that, it's comforting to an actor. You're starting the relationship more as a collaborator, rather than as an employee or some kind of a soldier trying to execute something you don't organically feel.

People have often asked if I'm gay because I don't go out of my way to spit and scratch and give people attitude.

I love a massage. I'd go every day if I could.

I play around with my Japanese Garden. Since Im half way to 70 today I need to start pruning trees and sharpening plants like an old fart.

As an actor, you only get to work 15 minutes an hour; as a director you're fully immersed. It's incredibly more complex and challenging and I love it. I'm sort of a glutton for work and to direct something that I'm acting in feeds the vein.

I just love doing sitcoms. I'd be in them till I was gray if they'd have me.

Not many get a chance to hit the career re-set button.

Jennifer Aniston and I have always just really gotten along well... I was just fortunate to be a good fit for parts in her films.

When you're actor, you have no idea how much work goes into pre-production. We're just sitting in our trailers waiting for someone to knock on our door to go to the set.

I think you get the parts that people are comfortable with seeing you play. I get that. And I don't shy away from those parts.

My hobbies have varied over the years. There were a whole set of new ones before I got married. Now I spend as much time with my wife, who is my best friend.

My comedic instinct, is a little bit more rooted in - my mother's British so I've always been more of the dry receiver of the crazy as opposed to the initiator of the crazy. I'm kind of predisposed to be the straight man.

I'm not a 'celebrity'. I'm not a big huge star and so when people see me it's usually to talk about something I've done and that's a great conversation to have.

I actually enjoyed changing diapers and I enjoyed swaddling. I don't mind being swaddled either, on occasion.

I think the internet is a huge positive.

Directing a movie is the greatest job in the world. I could not be more envious of the guys who get to do it all the time.

Marathons are good training goals.

I'm a guy who is a little bit complicated and is a little bit in his own head and is not the most free-spirited, fun-loving kind of guy.

What's frustrating as an actor, when you want to work hard, you can only work once that phone rings and then you can only work until the production wraps. Then you have to find another job.

Obviously, I did a couple of things right on the old casting couch.

Only one in every four people under 35 voted in the last election and Gore still won. So if we get more young people to vote, we can get the landslide we deserve and we could really reap the benefits of what John Kerry stands for.

Everyone is pretty upbeat about it, actually, ... The last thing we wanted to happen was to overstay our welcome and tarnish the experience and prestige of the show.

It was a great run and it's great that the network didn't cancel us outright, and they're letting us do five more where we can wrap up a lot of story arcs.

If people are going to complain about stereotyping, it's as likely to be Italian-Americans as gay people.

All in the Family.' I loved watching Carroll O'Connor play this despicable character and make him so hysterically flawed and charmingly vulnerable to where he could get away with saying so many off-color things and yet it endeared him to you.