205 Quotes by John C. Reilly

The thing I tried to remember when I was younger was ‘Do something that’s at least as good, if not better, than the last thing you did.’ So I started with Brian De Palma and Sean Penn. I had a pretty high bar to start with.

Hollywood is an illusion. These intense workplaces, with very close relationships, a few months at a time – and then it ends.

I’m not of the manor born; I’ve never felt entitled in that way. I just came to Hollywood to be an actor. All that lifestyle stuff is something to be managed.

That’s one of the difficult things of being an actor that I’m still not used to. You have to go, you have to show up at these places where you know nobody, and sometimes with really impressive, high stakes people like Roman Polanski.

I come from a pretty working-class neighborhood in Chicago. Hard work was just expected of you. It wasn’t some noble thing you did; it was a prerequisite. It’s what a man did. You get up, you put on your boots, and you work hard. We’ve lost a lot of that, I’m afraid.

People say, ‘Don’t you get tired of people coming up to you all the time?’ But what’s wrong with strangers saying they love you?

Honestly, to tell you the truth, being trapped in any video game sounds like a living nightmare to me. In most video games, the point is it’s a fight for survival, so I think it would be a terrifying place to live.

If you’re really being honest with yourself when you’re acting, part of it is touching the real you. You can only separate yourself so much from the character. Those vulnerable moments do touch me.

I love that people can’t place me. They don’t know my name. That’s ‘mission accomplished’ in my world.