Scoot McNairy Quotes

I've been so fortunate throughout my career, when I was doing theater, more theater than anything else, and when I was doing films that I got a chance just to do a broad range of things. In fact, a lot of my choices that I made were about that very thing. Every project that I had an opportunity to do or chose to do, I wanted it to be different from the last thing I did, and I think that's why I have a good, you know, I had kind of a diverse kind of résumé. I'm really - it's what I set out to do as an actor originally.

They wanted me to do Scream 2, and I hate talking about movies I turned down, because it sounds judgmental. There's nothing wrong with horror movies. I enjoy watching them. The main reason I turn a part down is if I think I won't be good.

I'm sure there have been missed opportunities, with films I've turned down that went on to be successful, but everyone in the industry has had that happen.

I feel that I've been very fortunate in the films that I have gotten and that I've chosen to do.

I have tried to make decisions to work with great directors, with good scripts, and that makes the pickings real slim.

I don't want to do every independent film offered to me.

I don't have an agenda where I do a comedy and say, 'I have to do a drama next,' or 'I am looking for an action movie now.'

The idea is to choose good roles and good movies. I don't want to act simply to remain in the industry, nor am I here to do glamour roles.

I was very well paid for my age, and I could make choices, decide not to do a film for six months and wait until I'd get the right thing. Which made me quite a coward.

In a sea of stories, find the right one to tell, and the right way to tell it.

I think early on it's important to put that at the back of your mind and make your own choices. Sometimes you do pick the same choices, just as a matter of course - not because someone else did it first, but because it was the best choice to make. But any actor worth his salt makes something their own.

I don't care if people perceive me as always selling out because I'm doing a studio picture. For me, the whole thing is you should be diverse in your choices; that's the beauty of being an actor, you should be able to do that.

As an actor, you get hired for what you last did. And I guess it just becomes your choice or obligation to do different things.

Roles that involved, whether it be training, whether it be physicality, getting skinny, there's some investment. There are roles that you do like that and sometimes there are roles that you do to make sure your family doesn't starve, but then you have to still say, "Is there something I can do with this? Can I do something with this that will be fair to the people watching it and fair to my time as well?" I'm at the point where that luxury of choice is getting more and more for me, absolutely, but it's more primarily roles that are more demanding of me in every way.

It's pretty rare that I watch a movie now without seeing the script in a way that I hate, where I can see the stage directions and the choices that the actors are making.

If you're doing an indie and you have time, sometimes you can do take after take after take, but if you're working in television on that filming schedule, you don't always have the time to do that. You learn very quickly, I think, how essential it is to come in with the strongest choice that you have.

So, it's always different. Some stuff, you want to do because it's a part that you've never played. It's always for story. Sometimes there's a story that you really dig, but there's no part that you're interested in. Sometimes you read a story and you say, "I could do that. I've never done that before. I could do play that part.

I like to do different things and, as my actrees career evolves, I will choose roles to do things that I haven't done before. There are a lot of different sides of me, and I'm in a unique position now, for the first time in my career, to decide what direction I want to go in.

The thing that I really like is psychology. I love the human mind. I love the choices you make based on your experiences and instincts and your development based on such experiences and so I guess that's why I love acting so much.

I think about how I conceptualize the audience. The trick is that they've got to be smarter and more worldly than me. So as I'm revising, I'm keeping that in mind. I cannot condescend, even a little bit. Every single choice that I make is motivated by that.

I had to cut a lot of things I wanted to keep [in The Art of Elegance]. I'm going to have to do a part two for sure.

I believe it is quite possible for us to obtain an outer peace at the present time. Historically speaking, when human beings are faced with the choice between destruction and change, they are apt to choose change, and it's about the only thing that will make them choose change. So we have the possibility at the present time to take a different direction in the world - the possibility exists!

The mind always wants to choose. The mind lives through choice. If you don't choose the mind drops. This is the way of Lao Tzu. How to drop the mind? - don't choose! That's why he never prescribes any meditation, because then there is no need for any meditation.

Some of my favorite scenes aren't in the movie. Because you, at some point, realize that your responsibility as director is purely to the story. It's not to your pleasure.

Mainstream Hollywood makes a few good movies a year. And in order to be in one of those, you have to be one of five people. Hollywood makes many bad movies too, which I'm not interested in being a part of. But there are only a few good independent movies a year, and many, many bad ones. I want to be in good movies, and I want people to see them.