Sean Baker Quotes

Most of the offers I get from Hollywood are for teen comedies. My manager thinks I'm crazy for turning down all that money, but I'm very picky.

For the most part, studio movies have huge budgets. They don't do anything under 30 to 40 million. When you have that much money at stake, you have so many people breathing down your neck.

Luckily, I haven't been offered any $300 million movies that I hate. So I'm not in that predicament just yet.

I've been lucky enough to work with some great directors, and I don't want to throw that away by doing one big horrible big budget film.

I've turned down shows offering large amounts of money.

I'm not so in a rush to direct just anything because I'm lucky that I can make a living so far as an actor and not have to worry about that as a director. And so I can be a little more choosy in things I direct.

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

There's a few movies I wanted to do, and I didn't get to do them partly because they wanted me to be part of the horse and pony show, getting the money, and I'm just not doing that. There's a few movies that people wanted me to do, but they were too safe.

Anybody who understands how a movie gets made understands that a deep-pockets player is not going to make a movie that has anything defamatory in it without protections.

If I want to, I can sign 20 films for ridiculous amounts of money, but I really want to do different kinds of cinema. I want creative satisfaction.

I'd just as soon do a big-budget movie as an independent one.

First of all, I choose the great roles, and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don't come, I choose the ones that pay the rent.

I've always been really picky about roles and make a point of reminding myself that it's not about the money - because, obviously, there's a lot of money to be made in this business if you're willing to do anything.

I think I'm wealthy. I make a good living for what I do. Well, it depends. If I'm doing an independent film I'm making no money - probably losing money. But if I'm doing a studio film, I'll make a decent wage. I can live for a year without working.

It costs a lot of money to release a movie. What you'd call art-house movies - movies that don't have big stars or big budgets - they're very hard for distributors to get behind 'em and take chances.

I'm not interested in making a $60-million studio film with a bunch of 24-year-olds telling me what to do.

I've always been in the middle of making my own movies, so taking acting jobs that take me away from that has been impossible.

The one benefit of having done all kinds of movies as an actor is, you learn the pros and cons of being tempted to do a really big movie because it costs a lot of money.

I wouldn't mind doing a film revolving around horses, but I wouldn't dilute my equity just sitting on one.

I take more jobs when I need more money, if I'm investing in films. I take fewer when I don't. Or if something really good comes along, I usually find a way to do a good job on it in the time that I've got.

I really feel all my adult life has been spent in that little black box. If a wonderful part on TV came along I would do it. But I don't want to do a recurring role. It would just be my luck that the thing would be successful. I'm old enough now and also secure enough financially that I really only want to do what I want to do.

I only made two studio movies, that was a long time ago and obviously I removed myself. I think some of that is geographical. I live in New York and I want to work there, it's as simple as that.

I made the best business decision at 14 when I decided to get into acting. The worst was owning 2 homes at the same time.

I hadn't made a big-budget film, and in Hollywood there's a sort of man and boys situation. You're a man, you make $80 million movies! As if it's harder to make an $80 million movie. Well, I guess businesswise it is because you have more executives to argue with.

I have to be careful not to do so many comedy airhead roles from now on. I've turned down a couple already.