Teller Quotes

The essence of comedy, drama, and horror is surprise. I have an uncanny ability to surprise people because they look at my face, and they don't know where I'm going.

In some ways, the audience becomes complacent when they go to a horror film. And so it's fun to take that attitude and then to upend it.

We watch a romantic comedy because we want to cry, say, or an action movie so we can participate in heroics. Horror's different. It can hit you with a moment of revulsion so hard you might want to erase the last five minutes of your life, please.

Anyone can go out on stage and start beating people over the head with rubber chickens. That'll get people's attention.

I don't like shows that are predictable. I like it when you're shocked and you have no idea who's about to die.

It's always fun to make people laugh, and then make them afraid or cry at the same time.

Surprise is a huge element in acting.

I think for a horror experience to be really scary, something has to be a bit of a shock and a surprise. It's like something you've never experienced before.

It was Freddie who instilled in us the belief that we had to make people gasp every time.

What is scary to me is silly to somebody else. CG isn't scary to me. It's like comedy - comedy and horror are quite similar, in that there'll always be somebody who'll say, 'I don't think that was funny.' And it's the same with things that are meant to be scary.

Blowing people's minds is one of my favorite things to do.

I love standing at a microphone and making a room of people laugh. That's the part of the work I love; everything else is extraneous.

Surprise is important. I think that's the essence of entertainment, really.

You can teach somebody how to be a brain surgeon, but you cannot teach them how to walk on a stage and make people laugh.

Since childhood, I've been a clown. I've always liked being very funny or trying to make people laugh. It's my original self.

Some things I see on television, I think, 'Oh my gosh, they're showing that now?' wow.

The goal is to blow the audience's mind.

I really like the power of stopping the laughter and turning it to horror.

So there are ups and downs, but the best is just the looks on people's faces when they meet me for the first time, because I am a real-life, walking, talking giant. It's not every day you see someone like me walking down the street.

Comedy is like horror - you have to shock something in the viewer's system to make them feel it.

The fact is I get shocked every time I meet Salman. I don't know why.

It's difficult, very difficult to create something new every time in this space of horror and scare people every time.

I mean, I find drama to be engaging and it makes your blood pressure go up and you keep watching, but it's not as entertaining as, say, comedy.

I've always just tried to make the audience laugh.

I always say that the horror genre and the comedy genre are close cousins because they are the two genres where you are attempting to elicit an involuntary vocal response from a crowd of people and you instantly know whether it's working or not.