Peter Riegert Quotes

I mark a script like an exam, and I try not to do anything under 50 per cent. Similarly with the part. And also film is a peculiar thing, parts don't necessarily read in script form anything like as well as they can do when it comes to materialising.

I never turn down scripts without good reason. If I did, I would probably never work.

You're only as good as your last collection, which is an enormous pressure.

If the staff lacks policy guidance against which to test decisions, their decisions will be random.

I still take work if I think it's good. If I like the script, I'll do it. If I don't, I won't.

You can't do things for money. You just can't act them. There's gotta be something about the script that you really want to do. I wouldn't do a job if I didn't think I could do the best work I possibly could.

I think there is a sort of box-ticking mentality. Not just in the teaching profession. You hear about it in medicine and nursing. It's a lawyer-driven insistence on meeting prescribed standards rather than just being a good doctor.

I don't like to just grab any ol' role.

The more I'm here in L.A. talking to people, the more I believe that what I've been doing is right, and that's the belief that you have to judge a role from the character, by the script.

This is a tough business, and you're asked to do a job. And part of doing that job is to rate and to do well and to perform, and at certain points, when people are unable to do the job they're hired to do, what happens is people are let go. Their contract is not renewed.

I've seen such great material, and now I'm more picky with the type of jobs that I take because it's gotta be there. There's an old theater saying: 'If it's not on the page, it's not on the stage'... You gotta have some type of standards as far as the jobs that you take and the roles that you take on.

I accept offers only when people approach me with a good script, and all those experiences have been great.

When I was a kid, I thought good acting was fascinating, and I could tell the difference. I could see that at like 9 years old.

As a scientist in charge of space sensors and entire space missions before I was at NASA, I myself was involved in projects that overran. But that's no excuse for remaining silent about this growing problem or failing to champion reform.

We hire people who are smarter than us.

My priority is the script. Get me a good script, and I will sign the movie. I think I should leave the casting up to the experts!

For me, quality of role is important, and if a role excites me, I do it.

What a casting director does is they're a connector.

Sometimes casting falls in place easily and sometimes it takes a while. Fifty per cent of my job is done when I get the right actors.

When a company gets bigger, when it begins to bring on employees, it naturally goes through this tendency of wanting to control, of wanting to build process - essentially to say not every one of our customers or employees has great judgment.

I don't choose my directors, but I choose my scripts wisely.

If someone offered me a movie, I will take your script.

A lot of people have an opinion on scripts, but they aren't equipped to diagnose what the problems are. You realize that scriptwriting is such a specialist subject, but because it's so common, everyone thinks that they can talk about that. I think it's something that writers only know, that they can see.

When you start out as an actor, you read a script thinking of it at its best. But that's not usually the case in general, and usually what you have to do is you have to read a script and think of it at its worst. You read it going, "OK, how bad could this be?" first and foremost. You cannot make a good film out of a bad script. You can make a bad film out of a good script, but you can't make a good film out of a bad script.

It's the business that you guys are in too. We try to get as much information as we can and make the best decisions that we can for the football team.