William H. Macy Quotations

That red carpet has to be felt to be believed.

Yeah, I made it. It sneaks up on you. You're some schmuck and you wake up one day and you go, Good God, I'm the cheese.

A favorite cast? Lisa Kudrow, Anthony Hopkins, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, and my wife.

I think I've been in situations where they looked at me and just see some rich white guy - they don't see me at all.

I was a dog in a past life. Really. I'll be walking down the street and dogs will do a sort of double take. Like, Hey, I know him.

We thought sex was free. Sex is not free. There's a price to be paid emotionally, physically, even legally. Sex isn't a casual thing. It's a huge thing.

Everyone hooks up with George Clooney. He's a genuinely cool guy. He's using his powers for good.

Nobody became an actor because he had a good childhood.

I'm not against watching myself, but I miss a lot of it. I've got two little kids who we don't let watch TV.

I'm sure I have a process, but it mostly takes place in my dreams.

Oh yeah, that's the Holy Grail, Pirates of the Caribbean. Johnny Depp, he's the real deal, isn't he? He doesn't get the girl, and he doesn't care.

I think theater is powerful. The best experiences I had in the theater are more powerful than the best experiences I had in movies.

I'm a firm believer that character is highly overrated. Character is a trick that we do with the audience's collusion.

Stephen King writes a lot of things that are really charming and quirky, and that are more ironic than horror.

When I watch a film I get swept away. I don't really watch the camera.

I'll tell you this about the Oscars - they're real.

I'm really proud of the writing on Door to Door, and I think that's the Emmy that meant the most - the writing.

If I like the story and it's well written, and it's a character I want to play and they'll pay me, then I decide to do it.

Ninety percent of the preparation we do as actors is just jive. It doesn't do anything.

There are some older women out there who are just knockouts, real beauties, and they're not getting the roles they should.

We all want to be 20 again and have that first sense of love.

I got an agent. He said, what do you wanna do, and I said, I want an Oscar nomination. That's your job, that's what I'm paying you for. And I got it.

It started with the Godfather, this operatic violence. I don't know.

The only people who do plays in LA are people who can't get jobs in TV shows.

The Spirit Awards are great too, they'll say anything because they're not televised. Another great drinking night.

When Fargo came out, I hired a publicist for the first time in my life. I thought, if ever I was going to make it, that was then.

I do them all for the money, I really do.

What actors are good at doing is walking into a situation that should make you incredibly self-conscious and frightened and doing it anyway. That's the gig, pretending that you are comfortable.

It was my first impulse, but I chose to play the priest as a true believer who was an absolute man of faith that absolutely supports the church.

We, in America, are so screwed up when it comes to sex. That's all we can see.

There are statistics out that say 20 year olds, 18 years olds think about sex 90 percent of the time. They only don't think about sex when they're eating, and that's rare.

I've got two little girls, I'm not scared about sex. I'll teach them, it's not going to kill them. But what could kill them is violence. Guns, drinking and driving, these are the real dangers in our society.

I'm not much of a preparer. I think sometimes as an actor you need to go out and learn some skills, but in terms of preparation for understanding the character, it's all on the page, and if it's not on the page, you're in trouble.

Just learn the whole script before you start shooting. That makes shooting a joy. Even if they rewrite, it's easy.

So many actors spend so much energy trying to remember the lines. It's so foolish. Guys are the worst.

Somebody's gotta stand up and say pubic hair is good, murder is bad. Sex is good, violence is bad.

You can skim those stage directions and go right to the dialogue. You can almost read the movie in the same amount of time it will take you to see the movie.

I introduced myself to Scorsese and I said, "If you need someone to do craft services, I'm there."

It sure is boring to be around people who are in character all the time. I always find it's closer to mental illness than acting excellence.

I'm not religious. It's an issue, 'cause I've got two little kids, and I feel you can't grow up without knowledge of religion.

Anyway, I try to be a good guy. I try to tell the truth, but I'm not religious.

I don't watch rushes. My whole thing is to try to stay in the moment with the other actor, and to let it all hang. I'm not sure I'm right on that, though.

I've written a lot of scripts that someone else directed, and it's absolutely vital that, if I'm gonna act in it, then I have to take off the writer hat and let the director direct.

Talk about putting your money where your mouth is. It's not right. Someone's gotta say it. They said it. I applaud them.

I've always felt it's the directors purview to say what; it's the actor's purview to say how. It's not good for an actor to have the big picture in mind - it bollocks you up. An actor's purview is the tiny little... We measure our performance in seconds.

The character and the actor in a long-running series slowly become one. I think there must be funny stories about actors who, in the pilot for a TV series, did some weird thing with their eyes, or some speech impediment or something, and the next thing you know, it's eight years later, and they're still doing that freaking gag.

Writers love to write those idiotic, long stage directions, and some of them worse than others. They have nothing to do with the movie. They're just jerking around.

Perhaps there is such a thing as obscene sex, but I know that violence is always obscene. So I don't get it, that you can disembowel a woman but you can't see her tits. Who made that up? That's sick!

I do love comedy, but I'm not brave enough to tackle a script whose goal is to make you laugh. That's tough. The ones that can do it, I tip my hat off to them, but I don't have that kind of humor or mind.

I think what all actors share is that, somewhere down in your solar plexus, there's this fear that you're not going to be able to come up with the goods, that this is the one movie where you're going to look like a fool, and they should have cast someone else. And you feel ugly, and you've got three chins, and you've gained too much weight, and you're losing your hair, and there are so many better actors who could do this. But if you've got chops, what you realize is that everybody feels that way, so just show up and do the job.

I feel very secure about the role of the actor in the future. They need us, because stories are about people.

You'd much rather act with a pal, someone you know really well. That way, you can cut all the niceties and go right to insulting each other.

With an inexperienced director, a lot of times the days go on to 14, 15, 16 hours. It goes horrendously overtime. And because of the lack of money, they just keep you there, regardless of the hours.

Here are the good things about independent films: They do the more interesting, chancy scripts. They're run by love.

The best thing for an actor to do is take your attention off of how you feel about it, and put it on striving to obtain a particular objective. The happy result is that it brings out all this unexpected stuff in yourself.

If I had my choice, I would do the same little independent films, but they would have $100 million budgets, so I could get paid a fortune and hang out in a huge trailer.

At the end of the day, what actors really want to do is act a lot and not wait around in the trailer.

I love making movies, I love the differentness of it, I love writing. But I've always liked television. I grew up on television.

The only reason an indie gets made is because someone has a burning passion to do it and won't take no for an answer, as opposed to a big film, which is like a train that starts rolling down the tracks and nothing can stop it.

I really love hanging out on the set, and I love the life, and all of that. But I don't think I could stick with this profession if it weren't for those 15 minutes a day when I get to act. That's the part I love. For some strange reason, it's the time that I'm the least self-conscious in my whole life.

Every scene has two people who want two different things, so there's conflict in every scene. You've got to duke it out, and you've got to get the other person to change his or her mind and do it your way.

That's pretty much what every scene is about, getting people to see your point of view. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

I don't know if it's fair to say that it's a bad time for movies. It seems to me that throughout the entire history of filmmaking, every year there have been about two really wonderful movies, about 10 others that are pretty good, and a whole pile of garbage.

I think acting is getting better and better.

Actors are embracing a new aesthetic, which is leaning more toward truthful and simple and direct, as opposed to what we would normally call sitcom acting.

I feel like a lot of the young actors that are just coming up are really good. I think directors are directing better.

I do want to do TV, but I'm looking to be a creator, writer, and producer, and perhaps I could be a recurring character. Do 10 shows a year, something like that.

Directing is a huge amount of work with very little payoff, and a quarter of the money, and nine times more time spent.

All that back-story stuff doesn't help. What you get paid for is to stand toe-to-toe with the other actor and get him to do your will.

I'm getting bigger roles, and I'm on location more, and I have a wife and family. I'd rather work less, and I've started to implement that. It was either that or my wife would break my heart.

The roughest part is showing up. Once you throw yourself into the scene, it's just great fun to let it all go and not be self-conscious, and stop questioning whether you're sufficient.

You have to do whatever you can to limit the things that could make you feel insecure.

You should know the lines, be prepared, get sleep, and have the script analyzed so you're ready to rock and roll.

Nothing else counts except what you want.

How you feel will take care of itself.

I'm drawn to a lot of first-time directors. One of the great common denominators in these small independent films is that there's a person, or two people, who have an absolutely monomaniacal passion to get these films made. That's what makes them happen. Sometimes, it takes years and years to finally get it done, but by never backing down, by never giving up, they get these films to the screen by hook or by crook.

When a director makes a mistake, people suffer. People suffer horribly sometimes.

Making a mistake means overshooting a scene, shooting too many takes, for instance. Long after you've got it, you just keep shooting.

Ultimately, a more experienced director realizes that you've got to stop sometime and just move on. They're braver about that.

Another mistake a director can make is not to be prepared, so you get there on the day to shoot the scene, and they don't know how it should be blocked, and they're not clear on how they want to do a scene.

The actor has the advantage - or the liability - of knowing, "It's going to be my face up there on the frickin' screen, so I better keep my wits about me. Nobody's going to care that I was bad because I was not happy. They're only going to know I'm bad."

To a certain extent. I'm a fan of rehearsal on the day [of the shoot], more than getting together a week beforehand.

I'm a big fan of rehearsal. I'm famous for pulling the cast together, not so much to formally rehearse, but just to run the lines. My theory of acting is that it takes all your attention just to stay in the moment, and keep your attention on the other person, and get him to do what you want him to do.

I've always felt that, no matter where you go, people are just people.

Many times, I like to read the script before I even know who they want me to play, so I can read it and really enjoy it as an audience member. I think that's given me the ability to ferret out the really special scripts from all the rest.

It's hard on an actor when you have to do a scene 45 times and you know damn well that three of the angles a director is shooting will never make it into the movie.

A good actor's director, first of all, is prepared, so there's not an exorbitant amount of wasted footage.

We must admit that it is quite common that people do have affairs with their leading ladies and men.

One of the things I did early on in film was over-enunciate and talk too loud.

What I've discovered is, really, acting is acting is acting.

A good director is very well prepared, and knows exactly how he's going to cut the film, so the shooting is as efficient as possible.

I have a tendency to say yes to a script or no to a script. Not yes based on a rewrite.

I love directors who talk action as opposed to emotion.

One's complete sentences are attempts, as often as not, to complete an incomplete self with words.

The emotions will take care of themselves. You don't have to prod them along. As a matter of fact, you get in trouble when you prod them along.

I have been working out for 30 years, staying in shape in the dream that someday I would get to play a sex scene. Finally I get one, and they cut it.

When I was in New York, I was making a living. We had a summer house and a car that I could put in a garage. That's something for a stage actor.

Emotions are the natural result of striving for something. Every single scene has two or more people in it, and nobody wants the same thing, so they are negotiating this one way or another. The result of that negotiation will bring out all kinds of emotional stuff in you.

It's hard to be depressed around a ukulele. You just pick it up and you're halfway home.

Sometimes, directors are afraid to stop shooting, because the second you stop and say, "We got it," and move on, you'll never get another chance. And they're terrified to get in the cutting room and not be happy. So they just keep shooting.