John Hawkes Quotes

I’d said to my sweetheart a couple of days before that the SAG and Spirit Award nomination was amazing and I had no attachment to the Academy Award. I knew I was an underdog so I just decided to sleep through the announcement.

It’s hard to get concert tickets.

As an actor you have to have a strong vivid imagination as you’re working and when the camera’s rolling, but there’s certainly a part of you that is aware of real life, that you’re making a movie.

I began to write fiction on the assumption that the true enemies of the novel were plot, character, setting and theme, and having once abandoned these familiar ways of thinking about fiction, totality of vision or structure was really all that remained.

Part of the way that I work is to observe.

I don’t really try to judge any character that I play, afterwards I figure it out, but while I’m working on the character, I have to find something in them to relate to.

I don’t think there are in life, pure darkness or pure light. Everyone’s got a little of everything.

A lot of times, you just don’t get the jobs you want to get.

Hitchhiking was such a pure form of existence. You’d wake up in the morning, and you’d have no idea what your day was going to be. And that’s something I’ve never been able to shake. I loved that.

When I over-prepare, I try to let it all go and forget all about it when the camera rolls, so I can just be present with the other actors and allow what’s going to happen to happen without too much preconception.

I lived in Texas for 10 years.

It seems like every year Hollywood makes an attempt to retell the Manson story, and I just couldn’t be less interested in it. It’s not really our crowning achievement as a civilisation. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done, but it just bores me.

I don’t have any training as an actor, but I guess I’m an intense pretender. When you read something over and over, it gets into you a little bit. You can’t help but begin to feel it, even if you’re a healthy person as I think I am.

I generally play strong people and scary people.

The only thing I do on a computer is play Texas Hold ‘Em, really. Obviously my cell phone is a computer. My car is a computer. I’m on computers every day without actively seeking them out.

I think that no matter how dark a person is, the more you learn about them, the more you understand about their life, the more you can sympathize with them or even root for them.

It’s probably odd for someone to read an interview where the interviewee is worried about exposure while they’re talking in an interview.

There’s a lot of skeletons in my closet!

I guess you can say that every actor is a ‘character actor’ on some level. But I think some actors have a wider range. I think that’s how you get that mantle.

It’s much more interesting to watch someone who is ill-equipped to solve their problem fight to solve their problem than wallow in the knowledge that they’re ill-equipped to solve their problems.

For me and for I’m sure any actor, each role is a different challenge to prepare for in a different way.

You don’t really ever think you’re that crazy person you’re playing.

I maintain that if you’re a novelist and you go into an art museum, you’ll come out a better novelist. And if you paint a picture for an hour you’re a better actor at the end of it.

I met Robert Rodriguez working on a movie called ‘Roadracers.’

I think we’ve all been misled, at moments in our lives, certainly in school situations, and things like that, with getting with the wrong group briefly, or falling in with someone who we learn the truth about and no longer want to really be with.

I understand why people achieve a level of fame and disappear, I never understood it before, but it’s an attractive prospect to walk away from it all.

It’s tough being an actor making music, because even I have a knee-jerk reaction to that.

It’s not like every director in every movie is seeking me out by any means, there are a lot of things I’m not suited for, a lot of things I’m not interested in, and a lot of things that directors wouldn’t be interested in me for.

I went to a performance of ‘The Crucible’ at the Guthrie when I was a sophomore in high school, and I knew right away that that’s what I wanted to do.

Starting in the mid-’80s, I played in a band called Meat Joy, and we made our own record, toured.

I don’t have actor training myself.

I want people to believe me when I play a part and they are less apt to if they know a lot about me and have associations about me.

I had to go to Sunday school once or twice in my life, and that’s where I commented someplace on hearing.

I lived in Texas for 10 years. There were a lot of people chewing, including my dad.

As an actor, you don’t often get a chance to know exactly the impact of what the audience is seeing, even though you can ask where the frame is. A move that feels tiny can be huge, and vice versa.

People have said unkind things and you kind of have to, if you happen to read it, you have to just, you know, move on.