Gary Oldman Quotes

If you want to be a screenwriter, take an acting class to get a sense of what you're asking actors to do. Learning other skills will help you communicate with people and respect what they do.

And as I've gotten deeper into the process of making films and television and such, I think I have more trust in the fact that you really never know what you're going to find after the twenty-fifth take.

I like to sit down every day and not know where the book is going. I have no idea where the book is going to go or how it's going to end as I'm writing it.

It's fun to improvise, but I still think it's better to have a great script, you know, like a Charlie Kaufman script.

I prefer to surprise myself as I'm writing. I'm not interested in it if I already know where it's going. So I have only the most general sense of what I'm doing when I start a story. I sometimes have a destination in mind, but how the story is going to go from Point A to Point Z is something I make up as I go along.

I write sentence to sentence. That's the kind of writer I am. I don't have a plot when I begin. I have to be convinced and I have to be surprised.

Choosing to write a play is some kind of surrender. I don't make an outline. I sit and work, and suddenly the door opens, and out it comes.

I do a lot of improvising when I'm writing, and I work very hard on the scripts... they are written very much in an actor-friendly way.

As far as the creative side, the more I do this, the more I know that it's all about the writing. We don't always celebrate that enough, but without the writing, you can't do much. You got on a film sometimes, and it's sort of half-written, and they expect and think that the actor's job is to bring the extra part and the good part. It's not.

'End of Watch' was 98-percent written, and I work really hard to make it look like it's the first time I'm saying it.

The reality about shooting films is that you can shoot many jokes and decide later which one works. So it's not worth fighting about jokes.

I'm not saying I'm a writer, but I've been in movies for a long time, and I think I could write a script for a movie.

The way I write is very much without kind of a goal. I have something I'm interested in and then I decide I'm going to explore it. I don't know where the characters are going to go, I don't know what the movie is going to do or what the screenplay is going to do. For me, that's the way to keep it alive.

I like the detail work of telling a story in small pieces, as is done in movie-making, and also the long leap of faith needed to see a theatre performance through each night. Both require focus and self-discipline.

I started improvising the Cliff character, based on someone I grew up with.

Most of my favourite moments in film have been when I've had an opportunity to say something from scratch, something original, whether I jotted down a few lines or it came out in improvisation.

Much of what happens in Love Always is really from overheard conversations in the Russian Tea Room. It's an improvisation of the way certain Hollywood agents think and talk to each other.

One day I had an idea for a movie. Everything came after that.

There's got to be something you want to tell and that's the engine which spurs all of the work you have to do in order to create the story, but you have to love some sort of nugget of what you're telling to be a filmmaker.

Acting is an imaginative leap, really, isn't it? And imaginations prosper in different circumstances.

I always think I know the way a novel will go. I write maps on oversized art pads like the kind I carried around in college when I was earnest about drawing. I need to have some idea of the shape of the novel, where its headed, so that I can proceed with confidence. But the truth is my characters start doing and saying things I don't expect.

Writing film scripts is the hardest thing in the world. A script has to go to five or six drafts, and you need the feedback of other people and to keep coming back with a fresh eye, honing it down.

I want to work with anyone who's passionate about telling a story. I obviously have a list of people I really love, but it's a really long list.

Frank called me one day and said, 'I have an idea for a movie, why don't you come over and I'll tell you?' So I went over and we sat down and he said, 'This picture starts in heaven'. That shook me.

The greatest gift that an actor can have is good scripts because then you're relieved of the responsibility of trying to elevate the material.