Paul Bettany Quotes

That sounds stupid, but in most films that take six months, you're actually spending four weeks to do a fight scene.

I'm all about working with directors that are doing different techniques and I think everyone has their way of getting it to the place that they think is best.

When you're working through the [fight] scenes, you're working on such adrenalin. And then, later, you're like, "Oh, god, my back hurts. Where did that come from?" Your entire arm can be bruised up, but you don't even think about it while you're working.

I don't think action for action's sake is so fun, but when it helps tell the story, I love doing a good fight scene.

I grew up doing martial arts, and I love martial arts movies and fight scenes. I'm pretty athletic, so I enjoy doing that stuff.

If you have $300,000 to shoot a cigarette on a table, it's an enormous amount of money. Maybe that's why my movies are the way they are. But it's the only way I can make a living.

I don't need to go over a fight scene a million times. I got it. It comes very naturally to me to do that. And our industry is a little more physical than I think some people know, with regard to how much contact is made between WWE Superstars when we're wrestling a match. Whereas on set, sometimes actors aren't familiar with that sort of physicality.

There are directors, and I think this is true of all directors, it would be true if I was a director - If the actor didn't want to do what I was suggesting, I would let him do it his way, and then I would say to him, "Just give me one where you do what the director wants", and that, of course, is the take that's used.

I'm not going to say it's easy, but I do have an ease with picking up fight choreography because of my dance training.

From 1940 to about 1960, I had been writing just regular comics, the way my publishers wanted me too. He didn't want me to use words of more than two syllables if I could help it. He didn't want me to waste time on worrying about good dialogue or characterization. Just give me a lot of action, lot of fight scenes.

But in the former, those movie sets that you've been on like that, even if they're huge movies and most of its being spent in special effects afterwards, I think that's the way that we're going.

[In acting] I like the fight scenes because you don't have to remember lines.

When you're on set you don't realize the way something is going to look since you're on the other side of the camera.

It's so not sexy and intimate. There are 40 people in the room. There's a guy with his belly hanging out, with a boom in your face. It's really very technical. I think doing a love scene is tougher than doing a fight scene. It's so staged and you can't put light on her face and you have to hit the mark.

The hardest thing about movies is doing take 12, 13, and 14, and finding new ways to do the same lines. So the early takes are actually easier and I think there's more surprises in them.

I grew up as a cameraman, so it's much easier for me to shoot it myself. I work with an operator and a crew, but it's way easier for me to function as a cinematographer, than to have a cinematographer between me and the lens. I don't need that.

When I'm making a movie, it's making use of my creative juices, and it fills me up with what really is - I think my purpose here is to tell stories.

A movie is a creative process from its conception, through its writing, to its execution, to the editing. I think with the best films there is some kind of contribution from one person all the way through that. The best films are made by people who write, direct, and edit, so there's continuity.

I worked with the same producer from The Freebie, my cinematographer was one of my shooters from The Freebie. I was really aiming to tackle a genre, but sorta tackle it in my own way, and put my stamp on it, and the way that I like to see movies made.

I'm not only a writer, but have directed and produced, know the difficulties of the line producer, can deal with the studio, can talk with the director and get his or her vision and help exact that. I think it just gives you more tools.

Everyone that I meet always wants me to direct, but whenever I think of directing, I think of aligning shots. I'd definitely have to write and direct something. But I don't know if I could.

I've always been athletic and a dancer, so I love doing fight choreography.

Sometimes when you do fight scenes you think, "Oh, I'll be hit in the face," because people get carried away with their vanity and want to look too cool to care, but we were all really careful with each other.

As much as you do get beat-up doing even small action sequences, it's incredibly fun.

I think if I were asked to do as many as fifty takes, I would assume the director had no idea what he wanted, and was just hoping, eventually, to see it.