Chris O'Dowd Quotes

To me, if you are in the same building with Peter Sellers or John Cleese, or any of those guys and holding your own making other people laugh, that's a compliment.

There's something very edgy about Bill Murray out there improvising.

People have said to me for a long time, "Man you're funny." I say, "Well, I'm quick," but being funny on purpose, take after take - that's why I said for me it was new territory, and so by improvising something might come out that might be good. And it's film, so they can cut it if it isn't.

It scared me to death to think about improv, but I got hired for a year at Second City in Chicago, which made me nervous, but I found I could improvise. Then I was in a group called the Ace Trucking Company, which we'd do, like, a half hour set of material, then open up for improvisation.

I like making people laugh, so drama was never a big leap for me.

I think it's very important to live in the present. One of the great things that improvising teaches you is the magic of the moment that you're in because, when you improvise, you're in right now. You're not in yesterday or tomorrow - you're right in the moment.

'The Mindy Project' is really best when you're loose, and we improvise a lot, and that's what's best.

Some lucky people can be funny without half trying because they actually look funny, because acting funny is in their bones - fun as funny, not funny as crude slapstick.

The way Apatow works, you do it scripted a couple times, and then he just kind of lets you go and improvise.

Early on, I had a girlfriend come see me, and she was like, 'Yeah, it was good, but you were funny at a dining hall at the University of Maryland.' That's when I realized I was contrived. I was reciting jokes. So I really worked on - no matter what - sounding like I was just talking to the people.

I'm used to sort of improvising a lot when I do my comedies.

At Second City and improvising at iO, you're creating a character in an instant. All of a sudden, you're creating this history and this past for your character, and you're discovering it while you're doing it, and that's part of the fun of it.

We don't worry about continuity because when we're doing so many improvs, it's better to get the laugh. It's better to get the great lines even if they're in the wrong part of the room.

Everything I do on stage, I made up in saloons. I started doing it in front of people, and that became my performance. I never had writers.

One of the things that happened is I did a lot of shitty gigs. When you do a bunch of shitty bar gigs you have to get used to people yelling at you, you're used to thinking on the fly, to dealing with weird situations.

You can't do what you've been asked to do unless you do the best you can. And roughly speaking, the best you can do is to be very available as a character and actor to the people you're acting with. That's equally important, whether the camera's on the other person or on you.

I love to make people laugh, and do things that are surprising and different.

Better not to invent her in her absence. Better to wait until she's actually here. Then he can make her up as she goes along.

People either have comedy or they don't. You can't teach it to them.

I think most of the actors that I know that I think are good are kind of funny people. There's just something about being alive to the truth of a moment that makes a good joke that also makes a good actor.

When I'm doing stand-up, it's just me depending on me. I know how to go out there and make people laugh. I've been doing it since I was a teenager. I trust my instincts. I just go out and talk. A lot of the time I let the material come from the top of my head.

I think I'm the funniest guy in a room full of unfunny people. Unfortunately, my career is increasingly leading me into rooms where everybody is funny. I'm the least funny person in a room full of funny people.

Also I can come up with new bits - people yell stuff out and it's a new subject or a subject that I've been thinking about that I haven't done onstage yet and I'll just run with it.

This word gets overused in describing actors but I think it applies to Mike [Tyson] in this case - he was totally fearless. He jumped in and played with us comedically and improvised a lot. A lot of jokes in those scenes with him are from him improvising.

I am one of the funniest people on the planet.