Matt Ross famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

One of the fun things for me, about acting, is trying to transform. Transformational acting was the reason why I became an actor, in the first place.
-- Matt Ross

#Fun #Trying #Acting
A lot of acting requires you to be a charming version of yourself.
-- Matt Ross

#Acting #Charming
If everyone thinks you're bizarre and creepy, then you play bad guys. If everyone thinks you're beautiful and wants to kiss you, then you play the lead role.
-- Matt Ross

#Beautiful #Kissing #Thinking
I played guitar when I was a kid, a little bit. I can tool around with a guitar, but I'm certainly not a musician.
-- Matt Ross

#Kids #Guitar #Littles
I can sing, but it takes an incredible amount of work for me to sound acceptable.
-- Matt Ross

#Sound #Incredibles
When you listen to someone's songs, their soul comes through.
-- Matt Ross

#Song #Soul
One of the things that's fun about that is that sometimes you grow up knowing about someone because they were famous, but you don't really know what they were like before they were famous.
-- Matt Ross

#Fun #Growing Up #Knowing
When people talk about careers, I always feel like the connotation of a career is that you're actually choosing things.
-- Matt Ross

#Careers #People #Connotation
The challenge and love, for me, of acting is if you get to transform or do something you haven't done before. That's fun.
-- Matt Ross

#Fun #Challenges #Acting
I think that we are all the heroes of our own story, and I think life comes in all shades of gray. Personally, I love movies that exist like this, where you think someone can behave both heroically and like a villain.
-- Matt Ross

#Hero #Thinking #Villain
When I'm directing, I really try not to be tied to anything. I don't even have the sides in my hands. I have other things - ideas that I want to make sure I don't forget or that I want to accomplish. The endeavor isn't about propping up the screenplay; but about the communal effort of exploration from a lot of different departments - the actors, the DP, the costume designer - all these people and myself.
-- Matt Ross

#People #Effort #Trying
Essentially, no one can control what other people think of the final outcome. Once it's done, the audience will like it or not, they may even think I'm an idiot. They can also think I'm brilliant or whatever, I can't control that. What I can control is the joy in putting it together, the process of the work itself. I try and create an atmosphere where we're all enjoying the work. That's the only thing you can hold on to, the only true thing.
-- Matt Ross

#Thinking #People #Joy
Film is a pretty poor medium to deliver a message. I'm not trying to do that. I'm just trying to ask a lot of questions and hopefully you can draw your own conclusions about whatever meaning might be there or what point there is; but I was conscious of wanting to create something that for a lack of a better word had a positivity and earned that.
-- Matt Ross

#Positivity #Trying #Film
The first idea of Captain Fantastic was a pretty radically different one. The genesis had to do with parenting and questions about parenthood and fatherhood specifically. I have two kids and I was grappling with what my values were and what I wanted to pass to my children. So I was positing different kinds of parents and different ways of parenting. I played with various ideas - very permissive parenting, very restrictive parenting and then I came up with the character of Viggo Mortensen, and much of it was aspirational, some of it was autobiographical.
-- Matt Ross

#Children #Character #Kids
The foreign audiences are somewhat surprised and happy to find an American film that asks questions about American culture. There's a certain kind of cultural imperialism that we practice. Our films penetrate every market in the world. I have seen and have had people reflect to me, maybe not in so many words or specifically, but I get the subtext of it - they're somewhat charmed and surprised and happy to see an American film reflect on our culture. Because they see other cultures reflect on our culture but they don't see US culture reflecting on itself in quite the same way.
-- Matt Ross

#People #Culture #World
I think my ultimate directorial style is 'play.' In reference to theater, it's called a play - I believe in that noun, and the verb that goes with it.
-- Matt Ross

#Believe #Thinking #Style
I think being a good parent means that every day is a different challenge. It's about mindfulness and trying to be present. I think life goes really quickly and it's very easy to be tuned out, and not be present. That is what I've learned in my parenting experience, and I continue to be mindful of it.
-- Matt Ross

#Mean #Thinking #Parent
A lot of directors on a base level are fearful of actors and maybe even distrustful. I love the craft of acting and I love actors so I think they can probably sense that. They also know that I understand what their process is, having done it myself. The thing I come back to over and over again is that for most people who are not analyzing it from a critical point of view, most iconic film moments are actor moments. We show up to commune with another human being and their experience. We don't show up necessarily to watch a really cool dolly shot.
-- Matt Ross

#Thinking #People #Acting
The real truth - like anything, you have an idea about something you might write and it changes. People reflect on it or you get other ideas and maybe your original idea is radically different than how it ends up being. It's not a theorem. You don't sit down and prove something. You start with an initial idea and it grows and grows. The math of the narrative changes. In some ways your original document and what the film ends up being are quite different.
-- Matt Ross

#Real #Writing #Math
Most people assume because I'm an actor that's all I know about and care about, I'm actually a camera geek and a film geek. I grew up making short films the same time I was acting. For me, it's a motion picture, not a play. I'm just as interested in what the camera department is doing and world building through costume design and production design as I am in acting. I think all good directors do that whether they're an actor or not.
-- Matt Ross

#Thinking #People #Design

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