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Edward Norton

Edward Norton Quotes

Actor

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Famous Edward Norton Quotes

“Most people don't relate to and can't generate concern for something they don't encounter personally or feel personally affected by. People have to have the palpable negatives in their lives dissected for them in ways that let them understand the root causes of unhealthy, unhappy conditions in their lives and then be allowed to really see and feel the positive alternatives.”

“A lot of people ask, "What do you pull on in your own life from your character?" In all honesty, it's not something that really works that way for me. I tend to look at these things as an imaginative process and a challenge of imagination and empathy, to some degree. I get much more out of meeting people who have lived these lives than I do digging around in my own limited experiences.”

“As an actor, if you step to the side and you look at [Thornton's performance] technically, and you try to imagine doing what he was doing, most people would panic. Most people would be on the set, and they would be panicking, going, "I'm not doing anything!" All the ham instincts in you would be screaming, "You've got to indicate something here." And it's beautiful, in a way. And so I appreciate, even as an audience member, the courage that it takes to be... frankly, to be subtle.”

“I'm an actor, and, beyond that, the thing I do most compulsively is writing. So I come at it very much from this sense of character. I get interested in people. And I feel confident in my capacity to absorb and manifest the characteristics of people. I have a real auditory hang-up for dialogue; re-creating the way people talk really is an addiction in my brain.”

“But at the same time, the film industry just got torched. The risk tolerance for the types of movies we're talking about is lower, and the reason for that is that the captains of the industry were asleep at the switch when their core business was being disrupted. And they're never getting it back. In a way, it makes it all the more exciting when the good ones get through.”

“I've been friends with the guys in Radiohead for a lot of years, and I watch the way those guys work with incredible envy. Because whatever the slings and arrows of dealing with the record business, at the end of the day, they have total creative autonomy. They don't need a lot to do what they do, and Thom [Yorke] and Jonny [Greenwood] and the guys have their own joint in their hometown.”