205 Quotes by John C. Reilly

I know I’m not some matinee idol, but I think we’re sold this bill of goods by the media, which says that only the most beautiful and dashing people can become movie stars. So when someone like me sneaks in, they have to redo the calculations.

I swear and it comes off a little angry, no matter how funny I’m trying to do it. If I use certain words with a certain intensity, it’s like ‘Whoa whoa whoa, buddy buddy!’

You know, the truth is that us actors would all like to believe we re-invent the wheel, every time we play a character. But, we’re human beings and our instruments are not violins, they are our bodies and our consciousness and our collective life experience.

One of the reasons people find me a believable actor is that I don’t seem like one of the gods from Olympus. I seem like someone who was lucky enough to be let into Olympus.

You were there all day long, 12 hours a day. So there was none of this, ‘I’m going back to my trailer, my trailer’s bigger than your trailer,’ that kind of Hollywood nonsense.

Unless you do the same thing, it’s tough for stereotypes to stick. That said, whatever you’ve done that’s most popular at a given moment is what people think “you do.”

I love to improvise, but I always thought “Man, it’s like the final frontier for improvisational actors, to really go for something emotional, something that’s not just chasing the laugh.”

I really enjoy my time off. If I’m going to go to work, it has to be something I really believe in, or else it’s totally tedious.

In Chicago it’s really a case of the play’s the thing – people are just so happy to be acting, you know? We were all actors – not like in New York or Los Angeles, where everyone says they are actors but they are actually waiting tables and hustling for spots in commercials.