I'd love to remain a secret and still work, but I also want people to see the movies I'm in and get a higher profile because of that. I like to think that as long as you continue choosing diverse roles, you can avoid becoming predictable.
Interpretation
Christian Bale expresses a desire for recognition while maintaining a level of privacy in his career.
In this quote, Christian Bale highlights the tension between wanting to achieve recognition for his work and the wish to keep his personal life private. He believes that maintaining a diverse choice of roles in his acting career can prevent him from becoming typecast or predictable, allowing him to balance both his professional visibility and personal secrecy.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the challenges actors face in balancing public scrutiny with their personal lives.
I don't think I was particularly in need of superheroes. I never had any fascination with Superman or Spider-Man or a Batman kind of character. If it happened at all, it was imagined characters that I had invented. My dad was a role model for me. He was a fascinating man. There was intrigue and entertainment growing up with him. He gave me an edict that I still pursue: “Life should never be boring."
You're creating a different world and the actor's job is to be able to convince the audience to enter into that world, whether it be actually something that you recognize from your own life or not.
'The Machinist' changed me. I learned that I really enjoy, literally, not saying a damned word for days at a time, except for what was in the scene. Whole days of... nothing. Just... standing still. I know a lot of people found it bizarre, because they'd be standing right next to me thinking, 'Why aren't we talking? What's going on?'
Everyone always tells you that you're the only one that can do this or that role right, and if you say no, they go to somebody else and tell them that they're the only one that can do it right. But when they're talking to you, you're always the 'Best Actor of Your Generation.'
It's got to do with putting yourself in other people's shoes and seeing how far you can come to truly understand them. I like the empathy that comes from acting.
But I learned that there's a certain character that can be built from embarrassing yourself endlessly. If you can sit happy with embarrassment, there's not much else that can really get to ya.
Most people read poetry listening for echoes because the echoes are familiar to them. They wade through it the way a boy wades through water, feeling with his toes for the bottom: The echoes are the bottom.
It's a funny thing about stories. It doesn't feel like you make them up, more like you find them. You type and type and you know you haven't got it yet, because somewhere out there, there's that perfect thing -- the unexpected ending that was always going to happen. That place you've always been heading for, but never expected to go.
You have to go out there and give a piece of yourself -- your life, your soul. And you better give the audience everything you can -- physically, emotionally, musically. Then maybe they'll accept you and give you a standing ovation at the end.
All we ever wanted was for Tupac to have the opportunity to tell his story.
I learned a few things on my own since, and modified some of the things he taught me, but everything, unequivocally, that I learned about comedy writing I learned from Danny Simon.
I used to think there was something dirty about being paid for something which is a sacred thing to do. I can't disconnect the act of writing music from the act of prayer. If anyone tries to stop me working, it feels like someone is trying to stop me from taking communion.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.