Spacey Quotes & Sayings

I've done big studio films and the big studio films I've done, I've tried to do the interesting ones and the ones where I could live with myself in the morning. — Kevin Spacey

Studios and networks who ignore either shift - whether the increasing sophistication of storytelling, or the constantly shifting sands of technological advancement - will be left behind, — Kevin Spacey

Both 'Consenting Adults' and 'Glengarry Glen Ross' revolve around the economic stresses of the '90s. They are about what people do when they're pushed against that wall, and how they're manipulated. They are both morality tales, though in very different genres. — Kevin Spacey

There's no doubt that some of the greatest films ever made have come from the theater. It's all a matter of finding a way to make the theater experience watchable on film. — Kevin Spacey

If someone can watch an entire season of a TV series in one day, doesn't that show an incredible attention span? — Kevin Spacey

We're all victims of our own hubris at times. — Kevin Spacey

You can't win a marathon without putting some bandaids on your nipples! — Kevin Spacey

I really like the Doors. I like Kevin Spacey, Bruce Springsteen, Will Farrell, Reggie Watts, Tina Turner, who is also very hot, Tracy Chapman. Beethoven. — Flula Borg

The audience has spoken, they want stories. They're dying for them. They're rooting for us to give them the right thing and they will talk about it, binge on it, carry it with them on the bus, and to the hairdresser, force it on their friends, tweet, blog, Facebook, make fan pages, silly gifs and god knows what else about it. — Kevin Spacey

You just play what a writer writes, in terms of what a character chooses to do and how a character chooses to deal with their various relationships. — Kevin Spacey

People have really long attention spans, and they love complicated plots. TV series are giving the audience what they want. — Kevin Spacey

Wanting people to listen, you can't just tap them on the shoulder anymore. You have to hit them with a sledgehammer, and then you'll notice you've got their strict attention. — Kevin Spacey

The Old Vic has always been first and foremost an actors' theatre, a home for great talent and memorable performances. — Kevin Spacey

If it were not for people who stepped forward and gave me opportunities at a time when I had not proved myself at all, believe me, I would not have a career. — Kevin Spacey

I am so leading the life that I want and wanted and dreamed of as a kid. I'm trying very hard not to abuse it or take advantage of it. — Kevin Spacey

I am now a commander of the British Empire. — Kevin Spacey

If you're not concerned about maintaining an image, you can pursue roads that another actor might not take. — Kevin Spacey

Have we become so celebrity-obsessed that there is no longer a difference between a character and an actor? I hope not. — Kevin Spacey

What I like about Britain is that I can live a normal life here. — Kevin Spacey

A couple of clues came my way of what I might be getting myself into when I sat down with a number of actors who had played Richard III in the past. And I was hoping of course, that one of them or all of them were gonna give me the magic key, the secret way in to play Richard III but none of them did that.But every one of them did say the following, "Be careful." — Kevin Spacey

The legal profession, politics and acting are very closely tied: the whole point is to have an idea and get it across to a listener, whether it is one person or five thousand in a hall. — Kevin Spacey

I am not an image. I am a human being. — Kevin Spacey

When you study, as I did, every theatrical beginning in this country, none of them have been greeted well. The Royal Shakespeare Company was a disaster, Peter Hall was a disaster, Richard Eyre was a disaster, Trevor Nunn was always a disaster. — Kevin Spacey

It's Hard to Stay Mad When There's So Much Beauty in the World — Kevin Spacey

I always remember is that no matter how good I might be in a movie, I'll never be any better. It's frozen. But in theatre I can be better tomorrow night, I can be better the night after that and I can be better in a week. The journey you go through as an actor is incredible. — Kevin Spacey

I thought I was going to be like Kevin Spacey in college. — Billy Eichner

Maybe there are people who are gamers who haven't seen movies I have made, or the movies I have made have made no impression on them at all. — Kevin Spacey

I have talked to more people who are in politics who have said to me, "[House of Cards] is closer than you can imagine. It's the most accurate description of how politics actually works that we've ever seen." I mean, West Wing - beautiful, wonderful idea of how democracy should work. But I've had more people in politics say they think House of Cards is closer. I - don't know whether to take that as a compliment or a sad state of affairs. — Kevin Spacey

You are not just, "This is the way I play it every night." You are constantly finding new ways in, new attacks, "I want to try it this way. Maybe this scene is affecting that scene. I want to attack this scene differently." — Kevin Spacey

I guess I've been training in the theater for as long as I can remember. — Kevin Spacey

I'm supposed to convince you, for two hours, that I'm somebody else. Now if you know everything about my life, if you think you've got me figured out and you think you know all my dark secrets, how am I ever going to convince you that I'm somebody else? — Kevin Spacey

I mean we all played as kids. You play games, you take on different characters, you imitate; the fun and the love of play has never left me. — Kevin Spacey

Secret Cinema has created a new way of experiencing film. The fusion of film and theatre allows for a much more powerful experience and adds an incredibly unique dimension for the audience. It certainly did for me. I was blown away — Kevin Spacey

Mediocrity is the elephant in the room. — Kevin Spacey

I don't watch rugby. — Kevin Spacey

It's not easy to sustain a long career, and sometimes I don't even think about how long I've been doing it. — Kevin Spacey

I would love to work with someone like Kevin Spacey as he could pass on what I need to learn. — Rachel Stevens

I think it is just a function of the fact that I moved around so much as a child that I learnt early on to make every place my home. — Kevin Spacey

I have done films where we all thought the director didn't know what he was doing and it is going to be a gobble gobble turkey. And you go and watch it and it is great. — Kevin Spacey

If you look back through history in the United States, there have been very few landslide elections. Half the country always voted for someone else. — Kevin Spacey

The less you know about me, the easier it is to convince you that I am that character on screen. — Kevin Spacey

I was on a couple of scholarships. I had a job in the school administrative office. I had a job as a hat-check boy in a restaurant. I had another job as an assistant to a casting director. It took a lot to get myself enough money to put myself through Juilliard. — Kevin Spacey

Kids aren't growing up with a sense of television as the aspirational place for their ideas. — Kevin Spacey

At the end of the day, storytelling is actually very simple in its origin as long as there are people who want to tell stories and there are people who want to hear them. — Kevin Spacey

No one's personal life is in the public interest. It's gossip, bottom line. End of story. — Kevin Spacey

I think that acting is a very humanizing profession. — Kevin Spacey

I don't care about my personal acting career anymore. I'm done with it. After 10 years of making movies and doing better than I ever could have imagined, I sort of had to ask myself: 'What am I supposed to do with all of this success that I have had?' — Kevin Spacey

I actually have a number of lovely watches from the International Watch Company. — Kevin Spacey

It takes stamina to get up like an athlete every single night, seven to eight performances a week, 20 weeks in a row. And there are many young performers who only learn their craft in the two minute bits it takes to film a scene. You never learn the arc of storytelling, the arc of a character that way. — Kevin Spacey

One of my favourites is 'American Beauty.' Spacey is so good in that. — Christopher Mintz-Plasse

Partisan rancour and party politics and ideology have got in the way of compromise - and compromise is the only thing that has ever made politics successful. — Kevin Spacey

There are two things that have been happening over the last few decades in my opinion. First, there have been unbelievable, remarkable, pioneering advances in technology and, second, an equal amount of evolution in creativity. These two shifts are meeting at an intersection. — Kevin Spacey

Sometimes it's the crazy people who turn out to be not so crazy. — Kevin Spacey

My favorite sounds are the high, spacey ones that are very ambient. — Andy Summers

Film is very condensed. — Kevin Spacey

Clearly the success of the Netflix model, releasing the entire season of 'House of Cards' at once, proved one thing: The audience wants the control. They want the freedom. If they want to binge as they've been doing on 'House of Cards' and lots of other shows, we should let them binge. — Kevin Spacey

Netflix did it right and focused on all the things that have replaced the dumb, raw numbers of the Nielsen world - they embraced targeted marketing and 'brand' as a virtue higher than ratings. — Kevin Spacey

To look in the eyes of audiences and see the kind of naughty glee that they got with being on the inside, the audience becomes your co-conspirators. — Kevin Spacey

I accept the fact that some things don't go the way you hope. — Kevin Spacey

The more shows that are produced, the more writers are hired, producers are hired, actors are hired, directors are hired, it means the more people will get employed. It's better for the economy. It's a fantastic thing. — Kevin Spacey

Talent is only interesting if it's challenged. — Kevin Spacey

I've been around politics a long time. I've seen it at its best and its worst, been at so many events, listened to private conversations versus public speaking, understood the game of it, and in many ways the theatrics. — Kevin Spacey

Success is like death. The more successful you become, the higher the houses in the hills get and the higher the fences get. — Kevin Spacey

I've been trying to take this journey over the last four years of getting away from playing manipulative and villainous characters and playing characters that are affected by what happens to them as opposed to unaffected. — Kevin Spacey

I'm used to people thinking I'm nuts. And you know what? I kind of love it. — Kevin Spacey

Secondarily, I think films that are driven by music also terrify studios. — Kevin Spacey

If you have done well in whatever business you are in, it is your duty to send the elevator back down and try to help bring up the next generation of undiscovered talent. — Kevin Spacey

When you're still, and some actors are really brilliant at that, you bring a kind of energy to you as opposed to sending the energy out. There are some actors, like Gary Cooper or Kevin Spacey, that are absolutely brilliant - Gene Hackman is another - at being and allowing the audience to just do the work. — Gabriel Byrne

Directing a film was something I was yearning to do. I always wanted to see if I had the capacity to be a good storyteller. — Kevin Spacey

No one should ever feel sorry for me. I've been treated very well for the most part. — Kevin Spacey

I can imagine there is going to come a time when someone will do 13 hours of a story without breaks. — Kevin Spacey

Fortunately for me, I don't come from the school where you only measure success by how much money something makes or whether it has a big box-office weekend. I measure it by how much people actually participate in the process. — Kevin Spacey

There's nothing like standing in a place and wanting nothing so much as to change but simply not being able to. — Kevin Spacey

I want to bring theatre to a new generation, using the tools available to us, including taking it out to them on film and with new technology, but that is just so they can discover theatre. I want them to come in and sit in a theatre. This is the way to plant seeds. — Kevin Spacey

I have to remember if I'm at some charitable event where kids are ... I try to remember don't swear in front of the kids! — Kevin Spacey

People sometimes have to be reminded, I'm not Frank Underwood. I'm an actor named Kevin Spacey. — Kevin Spacey

I certainly identify with the role of mentor and, to some degree, maybe teacher. I do a lot of work with kids at the Old Vic. — Kevin Spacey

If you wanna compete, you've got to get into the original content game. — Kevin Spacey

While the sciences are hugely important, let us not leave behind a child's imagination. — Kevin Spacey

Meeting the person you are going to be playing is very unique. — Kevin Spacey

Working in film tends to isolate actors - it's your close-up; it's all about you. — Kevin Spacey

I'm not out there trying to get press for myself nor am I trying to convince anybody that I'm living any kind of a life. I'm actually trying to convince people: I don't want you to know what I'm living, because it's none of your business. — Kevin Spacey

I heard what I'd learned against my will to identify as new age music. Aimless and spacey, it meandered from unresolved keyboard chord to unresolved keyboard chord with some somnolent noodling in place of melody. Drooling pianos, music to sleepwalk by. — Timothy Hallinan

Theatre is alive and it is now, and then it's gone. — Kevin Spacey

I wasn't trying to do a play or do what Kevin Spacey did. I was trying to do my own thing. — Kiefer Sutherland

People have different reasons for the way they live their lives. You cannot put everyone's reasons in the same box. — Kevin Spacey

I can't judge the characters I play, because it's for the audience to do. What I can try to do is to understand and embody what were they going through? How did they make the decisions they made? That to me is a more interesting way to approach something, rather than saying this person is a villain and that person is this and - because it's not very interesting to play that anyway. — Kevin Spacey

You can almost hear people saying, 'We're going to make a movie about an election' and 'We're going to make a movie about a lobbyist.' You can hear the yawning start across the nation. — Kevin Spacey

When you know you have 1,000 people sitting on the edge of their seats in silence because of a shift that just happened on stage, there is no better feeling. — Kevin Spacey

The thing that is always so surprising about plays written in another century is how remarkably elastic they are. When you listen to the way in which Shakespeare attacks relationships, for example, even though the words may start off sounding foreign, in actuality they are so accessible, the motivations so clear, the resonances so contemporary. When you put it in a modern context - we could well be in a place with someone like Gaddafi or Mubarak - it becomes apparent how Richard III resonates with that type of personality, with media and manipulation, alliances and petty jealousies. — Kevin Spacey

I believe if you go to a movie theatre, and you see something you think is incredible, if you walk out of the theatre and there was a bin in the lobby of DVDs of the film you just watched, you would buy four of them - one for you and three for your friends. — Kevin Spacey

I love producing, I love bringing things together. — Kevin Spacey

As the years have gone on, I find one of the dangers of watching dailies ... is you fall in love with moments. — Kevin Spacey

It's a really wonderful thing to focus your life on something other than your own personal career and ambition. — Kevin Spacey

I've taken the experiences that I've had in the theatre and applied them to film and television and now games. — Kevin Spacey

It's interesting to play a politician who gets stuff done. — Kevin Spacey

I'm not someone who's led my life trying to get publicity; I'd rather do my work and go home. — Kevin Spacey

The movies are not my first priority - the theater is. — Kevin Spacey

I like being able to go to a local pub and have great food and particularly love pubs that welcome my dogs. — Kevin Spacey

I love the simplicity of Kevin Spacey's work. He really does a subtle interpretation of every character, and that's kind of my style of acting when it comes to dramatic roles. — Devon Bostick