Nicolas Winding Refn Quotes

The first time I was flown to L.A. for a screen test was an incredibly nerve-racking experience.

I began my career performing in plays and musicals in New York, but by the mid-'80s, opportunities in Hollywood beckoned and I made the move to Los Angeles. It was a good decision. Work took off, but most important, I met my family out there - my husband, Bill, and the children we would adopt: Elijah, Mae-Mae, and Aron.

'Naked' propelled me into a whole other league. America started calling. I went over to Los Angeles and met all those people, and I started doing a few American films of various levels of quality.

I am blessed to have worked in big-budget films at an early stage of my career.

I think the older that I'm getting, the more I'm understand what a privileged job I have, and what an opportunity I have. Now I'm directing films and I'm getting my first movie in America off the ground, and you start to understand how the system really works.

I didn't quit movies. They quit me.

Boom, I move to L.A. after doing 'Aftershock,' and I've been actually working here. So it's all been 'boom'; it's all been 'boom' everything. It's so exciting. It's been amazing. I'm a very lucky girl.

Being in the business and growing up in L.A., I think I turned out pretty OK.

I always say: you're not going to find Hollywood. Hollywood will find you! But I'm ready for it: for Hollywood, for Bollywood, for everything!

I could never have imagined the films I've done and the people I've worked with when I was starting out; I certainly did not have a career path.

I don't think Hollywood was trying to do anything with me. In fact, they lost interest pretty quick. I think I got lucky, briefly, in the '90s, and it just so happened that those movies were the opportunities that came my way. Then it just kind of stopped.

I was thinking of going to college or staying in L.A. to act, and I stayed to give it a chance. I'm glad I did. I've had a lot of wonderful experiences - some horrible ones, but mostly really beautiful ones.

One day I'm lugging walls back and forth in Louisville, and the next day I'm at Cannes giving interviews next to Ben Kingsley. I'm nowhere near cynical or jaded enough not to be incredibly thrilled by that.

He who risks and fails can be forgiven. He who never risks and never fails is a failure in his whole being.

Hollywood... a city I was to come back to time and again, in sickness and in health, in success and in failure, with anticipation and with dread.

I went from sort of trying to get work to all of a sudden being signed up for the next few years on something, and something of this scale with some of the best people in the business involved, acting and directing. It was a dream.

Had I pursued a film career in Los Angeles, I'm not sure I would have had the fortune that I've had.

I've not done badly for a boy from Stockwell, where I used to gaze at the silver screen in wonderment, little realising I'd be a part of this magical world.

My dream was to go to Hollywood and become a movie star, and it happened. This country is geared toward that. When an actor can become president, anything can happen.

I didn't think I'd do movies in Los Angeles. I never thought it would happen. In fact, it was not a fantasy. For me, I said, 'If ever I go there, they will ask me to do 'Legally Blonde 5.'

Somebody with no connection to the film industry may succeed, and somebody with all connections to the industry may not.

After we finished filming 'Sinbad,' I went out to Los Angeles for meetings and was invited to a pre-Oscars party. I met Victoria Beckham, Kenneth Branagh, and Gary Oldman. That was quite a leap for me.

It's a chain of accidents. When you step into Hollywood, you wind yourself into thousands of chains of accidents. If all of the thousands happen to come out exactly right-and the chance of that figures out to be one in eight million-then you'll be a star.

I have to say I was very lucky in this [movie] business. I was in the right place at the right time when I first got started.

It’s literally true, as Shakespeare said--all the world’s a stage. It wasn’t that way when I first got into the movies in 1924, but it is now. That’s why I find Hollywood newer and more exciting every day. Whatever you hear it’s still a place where a kid from Montana can jump on a horse, ride that-a-way, and keep right on going.