Rick Baker Quotes

If you look at my career, you'll find that the same record doesn't show up more than once. I try to challenge myself with every project.

I have to be more universal than my projects, but no less innovative.

I want to be known for having a recognizable style. I believe having your own personal identity is what makes you competitive. On the other hand, I would like to be versatile and be challenged to go in new directions.

Each gig should be unique. You're always treading that line between keeping yourself fresh and giving people something they want to hear.

Surprising people is the key to career longevity for someone like me.

Read, listen to and watch everything you can. Explore the corners of popular culture and the arts. And, of course, these days you have to stay maniacally plugged in to the cutting edge of whatever technology is taking your profession into the future - otherwise you're toast.

What makes a specific quality or quantity of innovation retain its intense newness over the years?

What I look for in a script is something that challenges me, something that breaks new ground, something that allows me to flex my director muscle. You have got to think fast in this business, you've got to keep reinventing yourself to stay on top.

The technology at the leading edge changes so rapidly that you have to keep current after you get out of school. I think probably the most important thing is having good fundamentals.

I often don't know what I'll be working on next year or a year from now. There is often a chance meeting, or something that I worked on 10 years ago suddenly becomes important again.

I think the most important thing for an actor is to stay current and stay relevant, and those are probably the hardest things to do.

You need to reinvent yourself every day when you are doing creative work. I always say that the moment I feel I'm at the top of the mountain and I cannot do more, I would be finished. So that's why I always feel the earth quake beneath my feet. I always feel myself on the fire. Because I think this is something that gives you the right adrenaline to work and go forward in your professional life. I have reinvented myself, believe me, many times in my life!

Unless you’re continually improving your skills, you’re quickly becoming irrelevant.

Adapt your techniques to an idea, not an idea to your techniques.

People who leave their own time out of their work cannot be surprised if their time fails to find them interesting.

Ideas are the only things that count, and politicians are, for the most part, pretty much irrelevant.

In a world where lifelong employment in the same job is a thing of the past, creativity is not a luxury. It is essential for personal security and fulfillment.

I can critique the bad; I can take the good, and I can add whatever I want.

Different times call for different attitudes. But I love your generation because you are so creative and innovative in how you wear things, how you think, how you approach everything.

My advice to young people in the wrestling business would be to repeat such questions to yourself as: "How am I standing out? How am I getting recognized? How am I getting over?" And if you don't have definitive answers for doing those things, you are doing it wrong. It is, essentially, on them. There is no right way to do it, and that's one of the great things about this business because you can be creative. People who say they have it figured out are wrong.

If you wish to obtain a great name or to found an establishment, be completely mad; but be sure that your madness corresponds with the turn and temper of your age.

Only imagination that towers can reproduce evanescence and render rigidity flexible.

That without experimentation, a willingness to ask questions and try new things, we shall surely become static, repetitive, moribund.

The normal person classifies an object, and then forgets about it. The creative person, by contrast, is always open to new possibilities.

This world is changing enormously. In any position in a company you need to work very hard on learning new skills every day, but you also need to unlearn some of the old skills from the past.