Chad Stahelski Quotes

I was more wishy-washy in the first 12 years of my career, just because that was my personality.

To be honest, I don't see myself acting forever. I just can't imagine myself being a 70-year-old man fighting for roles. I would love to do small parts in my friends' movies or things that I'm directing myself. I do envision myself behind the camera as I get a little bit older.

My career has kind of taken on a life of its own.

When you grow up these days, you're told you're going to have four or five different careers during your lifetime. But what they don't tell you is that you're also going to be four or five different people along the way.

I have been acting for over 20 years and I started in the smallest little theater that you can possibly imagine and then I very slowly built myself to this point. So it is never like there is this real sharp change or something that really startled me. It has just been very gradual.

I definitely divide my life into decades. Almost every ten years, something in my work life has changed. My twenties were my journalistic phase, then there was my screenwriting phase, then I became a director, then I started doing some plays.

At some point you realize, I have dreams. I would love to be working on wonderful roles, in wonderful films, with people I respect and admire. And that will come in its time. In the meantime, "Pay attention to your work. Get better at what you do." That's my job.

It's been 50 years since I was on the roof of my parents' house shooting Hag in a Black Leather Jacket when I didn't even know there was such a thing as editing. I thought you just shot the film and showed it. That's exactly what I did. I'm not that different 50 years later.

All I thought about when I wrote my stories was, "I hope that these comic books would sell so I can keep my job and continue to pay the rent." Never in a million years could I have imagined that it would turn into what it has evolved into nowadays. Never.

We live in Los Angeles, where you are expected to move every two to four years, so people can see how well your career is going.

That's a big responsibility, and the details obsess me. And, also, I no longer feel I have to do the Tonight Show every time I open my mouth. Twenty years ago, I told myself I'd rather direct than act, and it's taken me this long. You lose your passion in acting. You make too many mistakes. Maybe that's why I make so many movies; if you don't like this one, another one's opening on Tuesday. But then I spent six months of my life on 'At Long Last Love,' a picture nobody saw. I enjoyed making it, I learned from it, I grew, but that's too much time out of my life.

When I first started, I saw myself shooting documentaries or making documentaries, which is what I did, mostly, for a number of years. So it was quite a surprise how I found myself shooting features. It was like my wildest dreams as a kid collided.

If I have things my way, over the next few years, I'm going to be doing a lot more directing and a lot less acting. That will be fun for a while.

In my career as a double, a lot of my job is to not just do the fights to make them look cool, but also to appear as the same person as the actor I am playing.

Develop a mentor at each stage of your career - someone who will give you guidance and advice.

I just want to thank Wayne for even mentioning me. I've been following his career since he started, just watching him evolve. He was always clever with the rhymes. My own quest was always to get my music out to everybody in the world and working with Wayne is truly a way to get it out there.

That's the secret to a movie career - just keeping an open mind.

Maybe further down the road in my career, in a couple of years when I'm maybe not that fast any more around the court, then maybe it would be good to come to the net a little bit more often

When you are a filmmaker, you need to be rooted, because committing yourself to producing or directing a film is a good three-year process.

When you start out in comedy, or probably in a lot of things, you want it to happen fast. You don't want to see yourself having to do this for seven years before you start to get some feedback.

You have to start at the very bottom and you've got to do every job. I did that so I could understand what everybody does. I didn't become this huge producer overnight. It took many, many years.

It's frustrating - not that I expect to be the same person I was 10 years ago, but I do expect to do certain things. In all honesty, my body for the most part feels really good. But at this point of my career, I have to rely on different parts of my game, knowing how to take some short cuts when you can.

Particularly for women, I think more of us in the industry need to just do it. I think guys are more willing to put themselves out, that way, at least with the girls that I know. We say we want to direct, but then we don't actually do it.

In my early career, I look at that time as a series of trial and error and learning as I go.

The first film I directed (Explicit Ills), I did when I was like 27 years old. I had been an actor for a certain amount of time, and then I was like, "I want to start directing."