113 Quotes by Peter Berg

Hollywood is not stupid, contrary to popular belief; it’s really a lot of intelligent people trying to figure things out.

I’m a huge fan of the Navy. My father was a Naval historian, and I’ve been studying Naval battles forever.

You might make a lot of money, but it’s very hard to get out from under that rug. The more you can reinvent yourself, the better – and unfortunately TV is designed not to let you redesign yourself.

I wanted to do a naval film and I flirted with different ideas, most of which ended up being too intense. So when the idea of ‘Battleship’ was first suggested, I was instantly drawn to the challenge – could I invent a movie around the idea of five ships fighting five ships?

One of the things that’s fascinating about making movies is a movie when it’s done and you start showing it to people, it reveals its impact, which is often times not what you thought.

I think I’ve been fortunate enough to have a fairly long career and hopefully I’m at the middle of it now. And I think I’m starting to develop a certain amount of experience and a certain amount of wisdom about kind of what really matters and what doesn’t matter.

I somewhere along the way became fascinated with exploring characters who are willing to put themselves into violent situations, whether it’s football, hockey, boxing, being a cop, being a soldier. There’s not a lot of people who are willing to put themselves into those situations.

You know to me, being a good actor, the most important quality is you’ve got to love to play, and to just be open to anything.

I tend to not have to handle things that are probably gonna end up being irrelevant, that aren’t gonna have much to do with the film. I have probably a better understanding of really what does matter, when to pick my battles and when to kind of let them go.