Jeremy Renner Quotes

I always like to get a role where I think, 'Ah, I know this is probably going to be played like this, but I'm going to do it like this.'

I'm an actor. I can do whatever I want. As an actor, not everything has to be the most obvious choice. And sometimes, the best thing you can do is to defy expectations.

I like to give the actors freedom to take what we have on the page and improve on it. And they do that quite a bit.

I'd like to think that I don't have a stock character that I go to. I'm lucky in that when you get to initiate your own scene, you get to play whoever you want. That's really kind of cool, but all my characters are short. I look on the videotape, and I thought they were taller, but they're all 5'2".

There's something very cool as an actor when you have an opportunity to play somebody who's real, whether they're still alive or not, but who has lived a life.

There ain't no rules here, we're trying to accomplish something...All this talk about rules...When the deal goes down...we make 'em up as we go along.

Sometimes it depends on the actor or the actress. Sometimes they demand a lot of rehearsals. Sometimes they don't. Making movies is not like making a play, so I guess you can leave some of the work for improvisation when they do the work.

If you feel safe then you can go wherever you want to go as an actor.

There's not much room for deviation, yet if you manage to crack it, there then you can express things that actually do sound unique and genuinely original.

Good actors never use the script unless it's amazing writing. All the good actors I've worked with, they all say whatever they want to say.

Creativity is not and never has been sensible.

I'm always surprised when you do something very different that people don't get behind you more, because you're always told, "Take chances! Stretch!" And when you do it, sometimes people get really supportive and excited, but sometimes people go at you because you've tossed out the formula.

I guess I've just gotten to the point where I don't want to be bored by the characters that I play, and I don't want to feel like I'm having to make something more interesting or I'm having to force something that's not really there on the page.

You have to be able to feel like you can play way outside of the box. If you're with a great filmmaker and someone you can trust, that's encouraged, and Seth was that kind of filmmaker and co-star.

One of the beauties about being an actor is that nothing really has to make sense. You just do it and live it and hope it comes out and try to find the truth in what's in the text in your own way and hopefully you can find truth in the text and everything else just comes.

One begins with two people on a stage, and one of them had better say something pretty quick.

I don't put big concepts on my work, and it's all often about keeping actors in a room together and not letting them leave.

If you're gonna tell a story from beginning to end, I always think you have to have a great structure in a script. If it gets you excited and it's something you've never read before that's another plus. I think also with improv and that whole world of stand-up, that's a whole other organism of comedy that still needs a story, but it's more free-form. On the set, it is the combination of both those worlds coming together: a great script and an allowance to play with it.

I like to let each thing happen - direct it a little consciously, maybe - but just kind of follow the vibrations I get in each particular circumstance. We don't plan theatrics. We hardly ever know which set we'll play.

Jazz is not just music, it's a way of life, it's a way of being, a way of thinking. . . . the new inventive phrases we make up to describe things - all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

Nobody is out to sabotage an entire script and do an improvisational experiment of a movie, but when they're feeling something in the moment, let them make it their own. That's what makes them great actors.

I try to always be open to what the actors want to try. I don't storyboard and try to be intuitive and open on the day of filming.

I play music - I write my own music, but I play music, just background music really, and just let it happen.

[J.F.Kennedy] is an iconic figure. And to make it even worse, he's a hero of mine. And every actor will tell you that you can't play heroes. And you can't play villains. You can only play human beings.

It's fun to play somebody who has no boundaries or rules. There's no book you can read on how to play a witch, so you just create a version. It's really great!