We have collected the best Script Quotes by famous authors including Ram Charan, Elizabeth Olsen, Kevin Barry, Adria Arjona, David Wain and many others, we hope that among them you will find the right thought.
In terms of script, Bollywood should learn from South Indian scripts. Not talking about the fights and action, I am talking about the drama bit.
Ram Charan
But I have a list of books that I want to read before I die, and whenever I get time to read something that isn’t a script, I’ll read something from that.
Elizabeth Olsen
‘City of Bohane’ has been optioned for film, and I’ve finished a first draft of the script.
Kevin Barry
You make a decision whether you just work on the script and believe in every moment and pick out every moment, or if you sit down and memorize lines. Once you really dig into a script, learning lines becomes almost second nature.
Adria Arjona
I was hired to do this one great script called ‘Cap’n Ricky’ and that project is up in the air at the moment.
David Wain
We did have a script, but it didn’t consist of the routines and gags. It outlined the basic story idea and just a plan for us to follow. But when it came to each scene, we and the gagmen would work out ideas.
Stan Laurel
When I make a film – I direct my own film, I write my own script – that’s what I want to hear from the audience. ‘Oh, thank you, Jackie!’
Jackie Chan
I can also romance a guy if I like the character and the script. Obviously, only in the film!
Sushant Singh Rajput
I was told once that I didn’t play the Hollywood game, and that’s why I wasn’t a big star. What they meant when was that I don’t go to parties, and when I go to an audition and I don’t like the script, they know it.
Sherilyn Fenn
With acting I am being led by the script, other actors, the director, etc. But with songwriting I feel it is much more self reliant and allows me to be in the creative experience without being as dependent on others.
Helen Slater
I’ve been fired from a situational comedy with a script they wrote specifically for me because of my voice.
Penn Jillette
The script is very good because the things that happen in it are very believable to me. It doesn’t presuppose that the world has changed very much. You don’t have to think that you’re in a different world.
Roger Spottiswoode
I’d always intended to make ‘Far North’ straight after ‘The Warrior.’ We had the rights to the short story, the script was in development, and I knew where I wanted to shoot it. It just took a long time getting the script together and raising the finance.
Asif Kapadia
I remember reading the script for ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ and thinking that I could quite happily spend the rest of my life watching this film; the story and the writing were so wonderful.
Stephen Frears
You can win more arguments then you might think as a writer, even though you legally have no recourse, and your script can get muddied and altered in any way possible. You can use reason, logic, and passion to argue persuasively for a case in your favor.
Shane Black
People would come to me and say, ‘Jet, your Kung Fu is pretty good, do you want to be an action star when you grow up?’ At 17, I was given the script and I went to make the movie.
Jet Li
Our audience is all the girls who made Britney a huge star. Those are the girls who bought the book. I didn’t read the book at first. I read the script just to see what I would think of the script and I really liked it.
Virginia Madsen
Every time I think I’m going to take it slow, a good script comes along.
Rajkummar Rao
Every movie you attack has its challenges, and I was excited about the challenges presented by ‘Deadpool.’ I was a huge fan of the original, and I think, as a director, you have to put the script first.
David Leitch
I like both music and acting, and they both have a lot in common – timing, immediacy, stuff like that. But acting is more regimented. You wait around for hours, you don’t get to write the script, you get hired. Music represents me better. I’m not acting; I’m just expressing myself.
Lukas Haas
I respond to a part just intuitively when I read a script.
Ralph Fiennes
At the same time, reading an action script… It makes me wonder. Was The Matrix a good script? I don’t know.
Shane West
Most of the most successful films Blumhouse has made have been rejected by everyone else. No one wanted to make ‘Get Out.’ Nobody. Nobody wanted to make ‘The Purge.’ I think it was floating around for three years before it came to us. Nobody wanted to make ‘The Gift,’ when it was a script called ‘Weirdo.’
Jason Blum
In some instances, I would say the writer does deserve equal billing with the director. In other instances the director – especially if he wrote part of the script himself – is clearly more the author of the movie.
Mark Romanek
If I have a script, I tend to stick to it even if God may be leading me elsewhere in the moment.
Francis Chan
You have to be careful so you don’t make your character dull and predictable. Sometimes you have to bend the script a little… The bad guys are mostly the same on the paper… A bad guy wouldn’t think of himself as bad.
Michael Wincott
When you have a good script you’re almost in more trouble than when you have a terrible script.
Robert Downey, Jr.
Well, you know, I never want to feel like I have a set plan of what I’m supposed to do. I kind of like to go script by script, and if I like the character and like the story that’s why I want to do a movie.
Abigail Breslin
Different directors have different things, so when I left Mike Leigh, as it were, and I went into other projects after ‘All or Nothing,’ it took some getting used to – what do you mean there’s a script?!?’ That kind of thing.
Sally Hawkins
I’ve had various experiences where I’ve been called by Hollywood studios to look at a script or comment on various scientific ideas that they’re trying to inject into a story.
Brian Greene
You’d go in, read the script once for timing and then you would sit around and play games. The sound effects people would come in and we would do a dress rehearsal so they could get the effects and the music cues in place. Then you would wait until you went on the air.
Dick York
I really think that reading a whole script is kind of prying and neurotic, don’t you?
Tom Baker
I started writing this feature comedy in New York – a Chris Farley vehicle. The script was decent. When I got to LA, I met some new friends in film school and had them read my script and give me notes.
David Steinberg
Generally, Hollywood makes the same stories over and over. I’ve never wanted to do the same thing twice. If a script doesn’t surprise me in some way, I simply can’t commit to the project.
Sherilyn Fenn
In the 90’s action pictures were all the rage. As a woman, I was fed up with them and I initially thought that the script was just another action film dressed up as a period piece.
Madeleine Stowe
When I start a picture, I always have a script, but I change it every day. I put in what occurs to me that day out of my imagination. You start on a voyage; you know where you will end up but not what will occur along the way. You want to be surprised.
Federico Fellini
I love improv. ‘Crazy, Stupid, Love,’ the script was really great, but the directors were open to letting you try different things. And that felt like a muscle I hadn’t exercised in a really long time.
Emma Stone
I like roles of people who can overcome things because there’s strength in that and an arc – and roles where they start in one place, and toward the end of the script they end up in a completely different place, so you’ve seen this growth and some humanity in the role.
Olivia d’Abo
We have the script, we have the actors, and we’re trying to figure out what this is, and you don’t know what it is. You have to be open to what it’s going to become rather than have this thing that you’re trying to get to, which is boring.
Charlie Kaufman
When you are working on a script, the story itself is not difficult. You say this would happen and then this, resulting perhaps in this. And the dialogue you make as true as you can.
Louis Malle
It’s always about trying to make everything go with the music, like a script. It’s not like, ‘Let’s have a confetti gun!’ If I ever have one of those, it will be because it’s absolutely the right thing at the moment in the song. I can’t just go get a confetti gun.
Victoria Legrand
I don’t see how it’s a risky thing to take a great part with a great director and a great script. That, to me, is not really a dangerous, risky proposition. It’s actually a really good choice.
Dennis Quaid
I’d love to work in the States; I’d love to work anywhere where you get a good script and a good part to play. But I do love British film as well.
Laura Carmichael
All actors bring something unexpected to the role because they have to translate what’s on the page and make a real character out of the black-and-white text that’s there in the script.
Joe Johnston
There is no norm that a woman must write a certain kind of script.
Aishwarya R. Dhanush
It’s possible for me to make a bad movie out of a good script, but I can’t make a good movie from a bad script.
George Clooney
When I went to the ‘Rush’ audition, I was blown away by the script. I thought it was fantastic.
Daniel Bruhl
Actually when I gave out the script, I gave it with a CD of all the music I wanted to put in the movie, and again, we never thought we’d get all that music.
Zach Braff
I was a novelist first. But in the mid-’80s, I did work in television for ten years. And yes, that was frequently the reaction to my scripts. People would say, ‘You know, George, this is great. We love it, a terrific script, but it would cost five times our budget to shoot this.’
George R. R. Martin
I truly believe that God brought this, Dorothy Day script to me, because for a long time up until I was in eight grade – I wanted to be a nun.
Moira Kelly
The reason we shot it was that the script was geared to Las Vegas and it was something commercial that we wanted to have in the can in case Butterfly was a success and we needed a follow-up.
Pia Zadora
I read the script and try not to bring anything personal into it. I make notes, talk to the director and we decide what kinds of shades should be in the character.
Dennis Farina
I regret not doing a film that I was offered with Clark Gable because the script was not good enough.
Leslie Caron
A script is not a piece of literature it’s a process.
Abel Ferrara
But once we got on the air, everybody except Morey Amsterdam pretty much stuck to the script.
Dick Van Dyke
Writing a great script – not just a good one, but a great one – is almost an impossible task.
Michael Arndt
I’ve had three novels published, and I was working a little bit in theater in Ireland. I wrote one film script just to see what it would turn out like.
Neil Jordan
If I had even the tiniest scrap of advice to give to a young actor who was figuring out how to audition, I would say don’t memorize the script… The reality about auditions is that 98 percent of the results has to do with what you are, not with what you did in the audition.
Wallace Shawn
If the script is right, I’m not above doing a movie with broad appeal.
Nicole Holofcener
I’ve worked on all sorts of things, like the sci-fi stuff for Vin Diesel, where the script is numbered and is in unphotocopy-able colours and your name is stamped into every page. And it doesn’t really help because it creates a false sense of specialness about the thing.
Colm Feore
I want to take roles that challenge me and I want to like the script and obviously feel connected with the director because the director to me is so important.
Amy Smart
I’m just a hired actor who was hired for a particular job, but I think one of the joys of reading the script was the way that the personal and the global are woven together.
Jeremy Northam
I need to push myself. I’m not saying that I just want to do anything that’s shocking, but when you have that combination of a script that’s really beautiful and extremely shocking, it’s exciting for me.
Emily Browning
Getting movies made is not as difficult as people think. Making movies is easy. You get a script, you get a director, you raise the money, you make the movie.
Stephen Baldwin
I was totally involved in Bobby’s World from the time we started the idea to sitting with the artists on how he would look, to the script meetings, the music, the lyrics, the songs.
Howie Mandel
‘V’ had just been cancelled; I was looking for a job, and the ‘Homeland’ script came across my desk. I loved it immediately, although I thought it would end up being discovered gradually – a slow-burner, like ‘The Wire.’
Morena Baccarin
Frankly, as much as I love to improvise, it hasn’t been difficult to stick to the script on ‘Mad Men.’ The writing is so precise, and the story so carefully crafted, that I don’t think there’s room – or need – for ad libbing. I could never come up with dialogue as lovely as these writers do, anyway.
Rich Sommer
And I tell ya, when I sit in that sound booth and started reading the script and starting to get into the character, man, it’s an easy jump for me, because I understand what it’s all about.
Lawrence Taylor
Mr Tony Hopkins says he’s willing to do it if he likes the script.
Dino De Laurentiis
They’re naughty, all those writers – they mess around with people. I know James Gandolfini got a bit fed up on ‘The Sopranos’: if he said anything in front of a writer, told them a story from his life, it could make its way into the script.
Kelly Macdonald
For me, I never take a job thinking it’s going to grab ratings or that it’s even going to be a success. I don’t. I just take the job because I love the character. Or I love the script. Maybe I love the director. But whatever I do, I never think about how it will do. That is not in my hands.
Kate del Castillo
It’s eighty percent script and twenty percent you get great actors. There’s nothing else to it.
William Wyler
I got it into my head that I was going to be starring in movies that I wrote, so that’s what I did. I stopped acting in all things, and I wrote my first script, which was optioned a week after I finished it.
Larry Bishop
They put it on the page because it sounded good or it looked good or they read it in a book somewhere that this is how you structure a script or something, and they just don’t get it. It’s surprising.
Macaulay Culkin
If I read the right script, if that script needs $5 million, if that script needs $50 million, I don’t care. If I read a project that’s beautiful, that I really want to make, whatever it needs, it needs.
Chris Evans
I never know if I’m the builder or architect. The role shifts all the time. But what I have come to conclude is that the script is the muse.
Abi Morgan
I don’t work for the commercial success of the film. I work to satisfy my producers who give me the money. I work to satisfy the director who has written a script for me. Of course, I have to satisfy the actor in me, but I want to satisfy them first.
Ajith Kumar
I like to begin every screenplay with a burst of delusional self-confidence. It tends to fade pretty quickly, but (for me, at least) there doesn’t seem to be any other way to start writing a script.
Michael Arndt
I would consider a half hour sitcom if the script was good.
Sela Ward
You just have to take these opportunities when they come along. They’re not that frequent; you’ll get a really good script, oh, maybe once a year if you’re lucky.
Felicity Jones
What happens is things come to you – director, script – and if you respond to it, it’s because it’s tapping into some part of what’s inside you, and different roles tap into different parts.
Sean Penn
Possibly because I did start off as a journalist, my starting point has always been that you’ve got to keep an audience with you. Whatever you’re doing, you always want a script to be a page-turner. It’s very important never, ever, to feel above that.
Tom Stoppard
Reading a newspaper is as important to me as reading a script. Sitting in a cafe and drinking coffee is as important as going for a shoot.
Atul Kulkarni
It was the script of ‘VRV’ that brought Gautham Karthik on board. He would not risk his career if he wasn’t confident about the film.
Aishwarya R. Dhanush
You never know when you read a script how it’s going to turn out because so much depends on the collaboration between people. If I’d been in some of the movies I turned down, maybe they wouldn’t have been a success.
Molly Ringwald
I don’t worry too much about the script, I just ad lib, like Pearl Bailey.
Mahalia Jackson
A script is only as good as the director who’s making it.
Helen McCrory
As soon as I saw the script for ‘Moonlight Drawn By Clouds,’ I thought it was fun, and I really wanted to do it.
Park Bo-gum
I wrote a script with my brother which ended up, somehow, on the Black List in 2008.
Kat Dennings
I’ve never committed to a role without a script.
Rebecca De Mornay
For me, it’s always the script. The script which gives me the chance to do something new; that has been my prime objective ever since I started acting. There’s nothing else that excites me more than that.
Manoj Bajpayee
I never really do much research before signing a film. It is just the script and character that I concentrate on.
Kareena Kapoor Khan
Knowing that Gene and Morgan were playing those roles made it much easier to put the script together-we knew who we were writing it for. It took some mystery away.
Stephen Hopkins
So it was just funny to read a script that was just similar to what had been going on in my life.
Piper Perabo
I can connect with whoever I want to connect with in the world. And I can also write my own script. I don’t have to follow rules. I can sort of just be unconventional.
Lynn Shelton
In America, everyone writes but no one reads. Everyone’s writing all day long – sending emails, tweets, text messages; they all think they’re James Cameron’s Avatar, performing in some video game for which they make up the script.
Gary Shteyngart
I worked in script development, many years ago, and read a lot of scripts. Between that and the scripts I’ve read as an actor, and I’m a writer as well, I think I have a pretty good sense about whether the bones of a story are there and whether the structure is intact.
William Mapother
I spent almost 3 months with Bergman, four hours every afternoon. We sat and went through the whole script. To be honest, most of the time we talked about life and other different things. It was really a wonderful time.
Bille August
It’s funny, because what happens to me when I read a script, when something grabs hold of me, I start getting these flashes of people or places or things or images.
Johnny Depp
When I was about six or seven, I did this character reenactment performance where I read a monologue from ‘Peter Pan.’ I got into a complete Peter Pan outfit and did a little paragraph from the script – and I ended up winning an award for it.
Levi Miller
Screen is satisfying because it’s so technical and mysterious. It’s like playing roulette: you get a script, you think it’s either great or naff, but you have no idea how it will really turn out. On stage, you are your own editor – and you get brief moments of grace, where suddenly you feel free.
Toby Stephens
I sold my first script when I was 21 – this kids’ adventure movie that never got made. I just bought that one back, actually. I’m pretty psyched about it.
Jason Segel
When the script was written, it was sent to me with asterisks marking where he felt a song would be appropriate. Before the film was shot, the score was written. I made a demo of it, so they lived with the music as they were making the film.
Alan Price
My plan was to go to New York and do some theatre, and then I got the script for ‘Psych.’ I was like, ‘Ahh – just as I thought I was out, you pulled me back in!’ I had a great meeting with the show creator and we laid out the parameters to make the show work: what I would do, what he would let me do.
James Roday
What’s going to be hard for me is to try to divorce myself as much as possible from what I wrote. I’ll have to approach it simply as raw material and try to craft a film script out of it.
Michael Chabon
Often jobs are un-turndownable even before you read the script. You go, ‘Well, I have to do that.’
Toby Jones
If it’s a modern-day story dealing with certain ethnic groups, I think I could open up certain scenes for improvisation, while staying within the structure of the script.
Martin Scorsese
Sometimes when it comes to the iconic kind of moments, when I read the script for the first time, you get little goose bumps or something because it really is kind of exciting.
Aaron Ashmore
There’s a rumor that there may be an attempt at organizing a possible script for a series on my life, which, when you look at my police record, you’d have to have more than one hour to tell the story.
Merle Haggard
I wrote the script of Patton. I had this very bizarre opening where he stands up in front of an American flag and gives this speech. Ultimately, I was fired. When the script was done, they hired another writer and that script was forgotten.
Francis Ford Coppola
I’ve been very lucky and been able to work, as an actress, but I’m definitely a working actress. I get a script, I audition, and then I pray.
Laura Haddock
I am a quick study – I can memorize a script in an hour – but I can’t remember a name three seconds. I’ve even forgotten my wife’s name on occasion.
Don Adams
I can’t even read a script. I’ve tried and it’s painful to watch.
Lauren Conrad
Whenever I get a good script, I don’t care whether it’s telly or theatre or big screen – I’m not bothered.
Pete Postlethwaite
Yes, I am aware that I have become a caricature. I’ve thought about this. Conceptually, what I’d like to do is the equivalent of writing myself out of the script.
Phil Collins
Compared to dancing, films seemed to me to be the work of lay bums. There was no physical pain; it was enough to say and imagine what was in the script. It was very easy for me.
Victoria Abril
I think the script is the key. Regardless of how great everybody else is working on a film, if you’re working on a script that you don’t think is great, you’re not gonna be able to make a great film. Whereas if the script is great, then you can.
Ewan McGregor
‘Safe’ was a script that I read and flipped out for.
Julianne Moore
My easiest judgment for a script is ‘do I want to keep reading it?’
Jason Blum
There’s no set rule, but when you look at the script, you start thinking about this person and how to create this human being on screen. You dig deeper into a script.
Pankaj Kapur
If you are making a script based on a book it can be frustrating going back to the source novel, because you’re turning the story into a totally different thing; the narrative of film is different from that of a book.
Clive Owen
‘Warm Bodies’ was a more long-term thing; I had to write the script, who knew if it was every really going to happen, if I’d find the right actors, and so on, so I grabbed ’50/50′ because I just fell in love with it.
Jonathan Levine
I think a good script is a rare thing, and I think no matter who you are you have to fight for the good ones.
Anna Kendrick
I find it really hard to even read another script while shooting.
Chris Pine
If you get a script and it’s really well written, that’s always exciting.
Amanda Abbington
If I get two lines in the script, I somehow turn it into 20. I’ve got a bit of a bad habit of doing that, of just embellishing my little moment.
Rebel Wilson
Fox came to us with the concept for ICE AGE and they came to us with the first draft of the script. They also gave us a mandate to make it into a comedy from what was previously a rather dramatic action concept.
Chris Wedge
I prefer doing strong roles irrespective of duration, and it is almost impossible for me to take up a role that has nothing much to contribute to the script.
Aishwarya Rajesh
Of all the stars whom I worked with, I think Steve knew better what worked for him on the screen than any other. He had such a sense of what he could register, and that helped a lot in terms of shaping the character and the script.
Robert Wise
Give me a good script, and I’ll be a hundred times better as a director.
George Cukor
I just arrive, they hand me a script and say, do it.
Esai Morales
Now it’s a fully realized production but for the fact that we’re holding our scripts in our hand and some of us used them, and some of us didn’t and you have to by union rules hold the script. You don’t have to use them but you gotta hold them.
Blair Underwood
There’s a lot of films that have relatively rigid road maps because they have a script and others that are less rigid because they have less of a script, like ‘Elephant.’ The road map becomes more interpretive, maybe, than one with a detailed script. Editing-wise, they all have their problems.
Gus Van Sant
I had the advantage of reading the book, and when the script was first submitted to me, it was just another gangster story – the east side taking over the west side and all that.
Edward G. Robinson
Usually when I write a script, I have in mind some real people that I’m writing about, who don’t always act in the film afterward.
Abbas Kiarostami
We started getting the script to different people and we were in the business of trying to fund it so we could get it off and running, and all the characters and sets designed and everything.
Don Bluth
What has always been at the heart of film making was the value of a script. It was really the writer who could make or break a film. But as we all know, the writer has always been at the bottom of the creative heap.
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
If I get a script that’s set in the jungle it goes to the bottom of the pile because I don’t think the playgrounds are going to be very good there! I’m really aware of how lucky I am but I have the kind of job where I can bring my child to work.
Kate Beckinsale
When James Cameron brought me the script, which I developed with both Cameron and Jay Cocks, I wanted to make it a thriller, an action film, but with a conscience, and I found that it had elements of social realism.
Kathryn Bigelow
The weird thing is, if I’d made ‘The Incredibles,’ shot-for-shot – exactly the same script, same timing, same shots – in live action, it would be perceived very differently, and somehow more adult than me doing it in animation. I find that fascinating and frustrating.
Brad Bird
I did three or four weeks of work on ‘Godzilla;’ it wasn’t a page-one rewrite or anything like that. The term is ‘script doctoring,’ is what I did on it.
David S. Goyer
Basically, if you could get a good trailer out of the script, Roger had no objection to you making a really good movie. He liked it if you did. He liked the more cleverness and ingenuity you could bring to it. He just wasn’t going to give you any more money.
John Sayles
My idea of an actor is to be different persons with different roles. Every time a script interests me, I look for interesting characters because I intend to completely transport myself into it. This happens only because I am a very greedy actor. I am not part of the rat race because I am living a dream.
Vidya Balan
‘War on Everyone,’ I think… the script was hilarious to me, but it’s very dark, dark humor. It’s super dark.
Michael Pena
When I wrote ‘Kidulthood,’ I didn’t even know there was going to be a ‘Kidulthood.’ I just wanted to test myself to see if I could write a script.
Noel Clarke
I keep an open mind when a script is narrated to me.
Kay Kay Menon
The main problem was a pacing problem. I had wanted the project to be about 20-30 issues, and I should have written it out as a full script beforehand.
Chester Brown
Well, obviously I was excited by the idea that Woody Allen was going to direct it. But at the same time, the script itself and the character was really interesting.
Radha Mitchell
The possibilities are infinite with new writing; every time you open a new script, there’s no limit to what it might contain.
Tom Stoppard
Then I got the offer to play Buck Rogers, but I turned it down thinking it was a cartoon character. Well I was wrong, it wasn’t at all. So I read the script and decided I liked the character, it had a good concept.
Gil Gerard
When I read for ‘Girls,’ I was like, ‘The script says ‘Handsome Carpenter,’ so someone else is going to get the part. They’ll have someone handsome, not me.’
Adam Driver
‘One Tree Hill’ was my first television experience, so naturally I was nervous initially. There is no rehearsal, you get your script a few days ahead, and you work. I was also the youngest actor, 13, on set at that time, but it was amazing to be able to ‘learn the ropes’ with such a supportive group of people.
Kelsey Chow
You can’t fix a bad script after you start shooting. The problems on the page only get bigger as they move to the big screen.
Howard Hawks
Director Kabir Khan had read the script of ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’ and is responsible for roping in Salman Khan for this film – a movie that will also mark as Salman’s debut production.
Rockline Venkatesh
I do music because I can just pick up my guitar and sing, and completely satisfy, instant gratification. I don’t need a script, I don’t people, I don’t need anything, cameras, I just have myself and my guitar, or keyboard.
Jeremy Renner
It’s very rare you get a great script just handed to you, or sent to you, by someone you don’t know.
Viggo Mortensen
I didn’t realize that, in doing a documentary, there is this process of discovery. It’s not like a film or a play with a set script. It sort of reveals itself.
William Shatner
I just have a belief that when there is a rare script out there that speaks to you, you have to stick with it. You have to.
Heather Matarazzo
Whenever I’m offered something, I always read the script and meet the director. I still appreciate just being considered.
Steve Carell
My experience is that’s rare – that you have a script that is… what they call ‘film-ready.’
Laura Linney
I love making ‘iCarly’ – it’s so much fun, and I love getting the script every week and not really knowing what insane thing I’m going to be doing. It’s just like an adventure every episode; that’s really fun.
Miranda Cosgrove
Anyone can write. But comedy, you’ve got to do some writing. You get one comedy script to every 20 dramas.
Michael Caine
I really enjoy playing villains, whether they’re realistic like Switchblade Sam or whether they’re a bit more over-the-top like Kruge in ‘Star Trek III’ or Judge Doom in ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit.’ It’s sort of a license just to be as bad as the script allows you to be – you can just go for it and have fun.
Christopher Lloyd
The way you get your script to the right people is that you put it in an envelope. It’s easy. The difficult bit is writing something that is so good people will take a punt on a brand new writer.
Steven Moffat
I always tend to see, right after reading the script, the character and how I want to play it. I guess that’s sort of most of the work, preparing for the role, but almost the creation of the character seems to go on as I read through the script.
Freddie Highmore
I don’t really belong to that world and I don’t think anyone’s going to miss me. I’m much happier just to write myself out of the script entirely.
Phil Collins
I like to stand in my kitchen with the script on a counter that’s about chest high. Usually I do something else at the same time – make a chicken or slice vegetables – and all day long I just read it over and over and over.
Christopher Walken
What I look for in a script is the plot point and whether they’re strong, obviously, or not, whether the characters are rich or not, and if I can do justice to the character or not. Some movies you look at and the script is so bad that no one can do anything with the script.
Larenz Tate
I keep every script from every film that I ever made because it’s like a workbook of that time in my life.
Marguerite Moreau
In the original draft I was 27 and Peter was 55 in the script. That’s not the same as a guy in his 40s and a dad in the end of his 70s. It’s a different point in both our lives.
Paul Reiser
It’s funny because I was offered film parts the first week after ‘The Office’ went out. I was sent a script, and I said, ‘Who’s the lead?’ They said, ‘We want you to be.’ And I said: ‘Well, who’s going to go and see that? You want John Cusack.’
Ricky Gervais
If you read the script, and the character’s got something in it that you relate to, then I am keen. But I really think, a lot of the time, my successful auditions are those where I really care about the characters.
Georgina Campbell
Sometimes we’ll only get one script in a year that we want to make that we feel is good enough.
Jerry Bruckheimer
I think sequels should be earned and we won’t do it unless the script is better than the first one.
Jay Roach
There’s a certain arrogance to an actor who will look at a script and feel like, because the words are simple, maybe they can paraphrase it and make it better.
Mary Steenburgen
They sent me the script and I thought that there was something very appealing and funny about it. Also, I was familiar with Mike Myers’ work in Saturday Night Live, but I did not know the extent to which he would make this creation.
Michael York
It feels very, very good to make a film freely, to work without having to wait years for script approval, without looking over your shoulder.
Bahman Ghobadi
Shiddat’ is a beautiful story of love and the strong bonds between people. It is pure and intense and also very relatable. I am usually not a love story kind of person, but when I heard the script, it moved me a lot.
Diana Penty
A script is utterly useless in and of itself; it’s only of any worth the minute your actors, your designers, your directors come into being.
Peter Mullan
I miss that process of getting the script and reading it and working on it. Every actor has their own way of memorizing their lines, and the whole process of starting to work with the other actors and the director, and doing rehearsals, and going to the location, and going through wardrobe.
Pauly Shore
I was out to have a good time and have some fun. It’s a fun script and fun people are in the movie.
Harvey Keitel
I felt alive when I read a script and acted out a scene, or sang a song. It was my dream. I’m just very lucky that I’m still doing it and able to earn a living from it.
Luke Evans
In the original script, my character was a basketball player rather than a boxer. I didn’t think I could pull that off. I’m a little short to be a basketball player!
Eddie Murphy
If the story’s interesting and it’s a compelling script, I’d be thrilled to be a part of it.
Andre Braugher
When I was 21, I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for ‘The Simpsons’ who’d briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.
Zadie Smith
What I mostly do is take the script, analyse the hell out of it, see what’s in there, see what kind of person I’m dealing with, and then forget I’m playing a father and just play a person who exemplifies all those things.
John Mahoney
Because these show are live, script pages are being switched during the program and new commercial teases might be yelled in your ear with just enough time to scribble them on scrap paper before reading them.
Randy West
What I look for in a script is something that challenges me, something that breaks new ground, something that allows me to flex my director muscle. You have got to think fast in this business, you’ve got to keep reinventing yourself to stay on top.
Michael Bay
The script, I always believe, is the foundation of everything. And if you don’t connect to that foundation, if you don’t believe in that and feel that you wanna spend three, four months of your life exploring it, then all of the other elements are secondary.
Ewan McGregor
I tend to get comfortable with the dialogue and find out who the person is in the script and try to hit that. People are sort of independent of their occupations and their pastimes. You don’t play a politician or a fireman or a cowboy – you just play a person.
Billy Campbell
Sometimes you see things in a script, and it doesn’t necessarily mean the director sees the same things. And if you think you’re going to be making a different film, then that’s not gonna work.
Michael Sheen
I, over the years, have always felt more comfortable if I could go into a projection room and look at a film and not really know what to expect. If you read the script first, you form all kinds of preconceptions about how things look, what the location’s like, what the actors are like.
John Williams
‘Argo’ was a great script from day one. I don’t think we knew that it was going to be such a success.
Tate Donovan
I’ve always found the script to be more of a skeleton, the template.
Taika Waititi
Your mind just goes to the craziest idea to lure people into the theater, and then you write your script around those elements.
Robert Rodriguez
Eventually, the state’s funding covered only the stages leading to presenting a film project to potential funding bodies. It was enough to produce a script, indicate casting and put together a budget to present it all, but nothing beyond that.
Andrzej Wajda
It was also wonderful to have the prospect of playing with Jack Nicholson. It was a terrific part, a terrific script, with Alexander Payne and Jack Nicholson. You can’t get any better than that!
Kathy Bates
Everything is a rejection of you, not your product, or your script, or a cosmetic. It’s you.
Morgan Brittany
Being an actor myself I realize that all actors believe they are qualified to play any role. If you showed me a script with a black woman character I would tell you that I could do it. That is what we do. We act as if we are someone else.
Richard Masur
Working with Danny Thomas was truly an adventure every week. Danny didn’t always say the words as they appeared in the script. I learned more by osmosis than by sitting down together. He was a force to be reckoned with: an explorer of television.
Angela Cartwright
I read the script for Wonder Boys, and I said that was almost perfect, it was so classy, cool and funny. It’s a really specific thing. We stuck to it, it turned out good and a lot of people liked it.
Robert Downey, Jr.
The difference between a movie star and a movie actor is this – a movie star will say, ‘How can I change the script to suit me?’ and a movie actor will say. ‘How can I change me to suit the script?’
Michael Caine
It’s fun to improvise, but I still think it’s better to have a great script, you know, like a Charlie Kaufman script.
Sam Rockwell
At 19, while studying at St Xavier’s College and majoring in literature and sociology, I got my first job as a copywriter. It was at a company called the Script Shop.
Zoya Akhtar
Chris Columbus, who directed the first two Harry Potter films and was the family comedy king through the ’80s and ’90s – ‘Mrs. Doubtfire,’ ‘Home Alone,’ etc. – has acquired rights to ‘The Cypress House’ and is working on the script himself, with intent to direct.
Michael Koryta
You can dress it up, but it comes down to the fact that a movie is only as good as its script.
Curtis Hanson
Offers come all the time, but I’m pretty particular. I really have to be wowed by a character I encounter in a script, or a storyline. I really do need to feel inspiration, otherwise I’m just happy planting perennials and making goat cheese.
Vera Farmiga
When I went in for ‘The Good Doctor,’ I had just been released from ‘Berlin Station.’ And when I got the initial role for the ‘Good Doctor’ pilot, her name was Allegra Abe. That was the script.
Tamlyn Tomita
We all had our reservations about possibly overdoing it but, you know, the script was great. Basically it stuck to the formula that worked for the first two movies, and for that reason I think this works as well.
Jason Biggs
They have become part of us in that if we get dressed up as them, we don’t actually have to have a script. You can just become them. You just become nervy.
Jennifer Saunders
When we shoot 24, there are so many things I have to worry about, from the script to technical things to my performance, that I don’t have a second to be bored or take anything for granted. We produce 24 hours of film a season, which is like making 12 movies.
Kiefer Sutherland
I believe that a good comic script can succeed despite being drawn badly, but that a bad script can’t be saved by good art. Of course, great writing and great illustration makes for a great comic 100 percent of the time.
Ryan North
I’ve learnt that I’ve had the best results from just trying to be me, trying to make a movie or TV show I want to see or write a script I want to read, and that’s really all I can offer – being authentic.
Dax Shepard
To be honest I don’t watch the show, I don’t watch any TV, so I have no idea what the show is about. I go to Hawaii, shot my scenes and script and ‘Ciao.’ I’m not a ‘Lost’ fanatic and it’s a disappointment for thousands people and friends that are dying to know what will happen. They know more than me.
Sonya Walger
Since I was 12 or 13, I have been taking movie meetings finding a project right for me because I wanted to try it. Craig gave us the script – it was set in Wales, it is really British humour. I just loved it.
Charlotte Church
We would change out of costume, then we would read the next days script.
David Selby
If I feel like it’s a well-written script and if it speaks to me, it’s something I want to do. I usually rely on my instincts when it comes to a script.
Michael Ealy
It’s hard to find a play that’s right for me to do. Rather than waiting around for the right script to come along, I decided to write one myself.
Dan Castellaneta
Tony Hale is a devout Christian and is a complete retard when it comes to swearing. The script called for him to swear for about 30 seconds and he just couldn’t do it.
Jason Bateman
While I don’t script and I don’t use other performers, I think my taste for underlying precision gives me something in common with Allan and George Brecht.
David Antin
If I’m not afraid when I’m reading a script, that means I know I’ve done it before. If I read something and think, Wow, I can’t play this part, then I want to play it more.
Linda Fiorentino
I love OneRepublic, The Script, All Time Low. I love pretty much every genre. I love the Rolling Stones and Elvis.
Ross Lynch
Back then, it was more or less we couldn’t change a line in our script. We weren’t allowed to change lines. Today, actors change everything and won’t do parts. It’s very different today. Back then, the producers were in charge. Today actors are more in charge.
Donna Douglas
In a perfect world, my tennis game gets better. I have kids and a beautiful wife and live on some hill somewhere that’s not in Los Angeles. And the script that Tom Hanks just barely turned down gets in my hands.
Matthew Perry
I do finish reading a script and say, Why are they making it and what are they talking about? I like to try and be responsible in my choices in that way.
Jennifer Connelly
Changes are required as far as scripts are concerned. People need to open up and experiment in story lines. But we don’t have good script writers, producers or directors. The Punjabi industry lacks cinema knowledge and professionalism. It is the saddest part.
Gurpreet Ghuggi
I like to rehearse with the actors scenes that are not in the script and will not be in the film because what we’re really doing is trying to establish their character, and good acting to me is about reacting.
Jim Jarmusch
If I want to kiss, I shall kiss. If I am told that a lovemaking scene is integral to the script, I will consider it.
Kareena Kapoor Khan
‘Liberace’s a great film. It’s a great piece of material. I have a great script and it’s a great score.
Jerry Weintraub
A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.
David Mamet
I created the characters from what I read in the script. I decided how I should talk, accent, no accent, my own voice, or a created voice. Then, I visualize what I should look like.
Ruth Buzzi
If I ever wrote a script myself, it would be strongly emotional material.
Jim Parsons
Every time I try to retire, or even think of retiring from acting, my agent comes up with a script.
Anthony Hopkins
I think every script I read has something that sends me into a state of panic but that usually makes me want to do it.
Lily Rabe
The only thing approaching art in a movie is the script.
David Bailey
As an actor, you really want to respect and honor the script. You want to try to be in the moment and you also realize that you’re one part of a bigger picture and when they call action, you have your dance.
Carrie-Anne Moss
In television you don’t have a lot of time to spend with the role or the script. Typically you get a script a week prior to shooting. Sometimes it’s even less time, not enough time to dream about the role.
Chadwick Boseman
Fozzie Bear has so many bear puns in this script – like, ‘Trac is grizzly!’ ‘This is unbearable!’ It’s the greatest.
Jason Segel
If a script comes together, and you end up liking the people who are part of it, that’s when you can make magic happen. It’s a huge combination of trying to find something you think you can deliver on and a director you think you can collaborate with to make a good picture.
Alexa Vega
What appealed to me about ‘The Loved Ones’ script was that it had this really theatrical element to it. I thought that the scope of this character is so broad, and there is so much fun to be had playing a crazy teenage loner. It was a great way to explore the delusions a mind can create.
Robin McLeavy
When I do a horror or a fantasy film it all boils down to something in the script that surprises me. It could be a big thing or a small moment. If it’s there I’ll do it.
Lance Henriksen
I don’t watch many films. I just make sure my directors are really good. I will work even with a debut director, but the one-hour narration of the script should be mind-blowing.
Suriya
To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence.
Quentin Tarantino
My agent sent me the script and I loved it. I wondered how they would turn me into a chimp. My agent said it would probably not entail to much time. Just some hair and make-up. I found out that it was not so simple.
Kim Hunter
You live for those really great scenes where you almost feel that the film has gone beyond what was printed on the script pages and been raised to another level.
Tobey Maguire
Most actors really love it, that’s what they want to do. They burn to do it. And so they’ll read a script and think, that’s an interesting part. And because they love acting, that blinds them to the fact that the rest of it is pretentious nonsense, which it very often is.
Hugh Grant
A good script can come from anywhere.
Ayushmann Khurrana
If you try to make a silent movie with a normal script and you just pull out the dialogue, you will have big problems with the actors because you will ask them to tell a story that you don’t know.
Michel Hazanavicius
I wouldn’t say I’m a very controlling person. For instance, when I talk to the actors, I don’t tell them exactly what I want because I want them to surprise me. I even encourage them to change some of the verses of the script if they need to.
Alejandro Amenabar
Coming from an action background, I always approach the action sequences in any script as kind of placeholders.
David Leitch
‘Unforgiven’ is probably an example of a script that I liked right away but thought, ‘This is great, but I’d like to do this when I’m older.’ So I stuck it in the drawer for ten years and then took it out.
Clint Eastwood
I mark a script like an exam, and I try not to do anything under 50 per cent. Similarly with the part. And also film is a peculiar thing, parts don’t necessarily read in script form anything like as well as they can do when it comes to materialising.
John Hurt
If I’m having a bad day in rehearsal, I’ll sleep with my script.
Nina Arianda
When you first start out as an actor, you’re just looking for a good part. As time goes on, if you’re being held responsible for the movies themselves, you’re looking for a good script all around.
George Clooney
It’s madness to hand in a script to a director, leave them alone, and for the director not to want the writer there with rehearsals and the shoot.
Peter Morgan
I think part of the problem sometimes is that there’s so much happening in my books, to whittle it down into a single script is hard.
Sarah Dessen
I don’t really get into a big intellectual analysis of why I am going to do a certain script or not.
Clint Eastwood
I wasn’t involved, except to the degree that they sent me drafts of the script as the writer turned them in. They asked me at one point to write a memo about what I thought of it.
Michael Chabon
People don’t understand how much time and work it takes to make somebody laugh, and how hard it is to write a script, to put together the story, the characters. When everyone laughs simultaneously, there’s no greater feeling.
Marlon Wayans
To try to create a character without a whole lot of information can be taxing. At the same time, it’s fun to just stay on your toes and let the next bit of dialogue come in, and turn the page as you read the next script and see what they have in store for you next.
Dallas Roberts
If the script is boring when I read it, I am sure it would be boring onscreen, too.
Aishwarya Rajesh
Movement should be a counter, whether in action scenes or dialogue or whatever. It counters where your eye is going. This style thing, for me it’s all fitted to the action, to the script, to the characters.
Samuel Fuller
There are so many people who come to me to be an actor, but I select only those people who I feel can fit my script. If they do, I immediately say yes. I don’t do screen tests. I talk to them and see how their mind functions. I read their mind and cast them.
Dev Anand
With proper acting, I don’t know what I would play – I got sent a script for a play, and it said in the notes that my proposed character was ‘hideously fat and ugly’. That made my day. I mean, I do know I am no oil painting.
Jo Brand
I play Harsh Vardhan, a good cop. ‘Baaz’ is a thriller, in which you doubt every character. I loved the script, as it is very tight and exciting.
Suniel Shetty
I’ve done about six comedies. Oddly enough, the script came to me from one of the guys in Platoon.
Tom Berenger
When I read the script, I was like, Hello, woman in a box. I had to explore that to the end.
Sherilyn Fenn
I was one of the first to read the ‘ER’ script and the good news is George Clooney still gives me credit for helping to launch his career. I had George Clooney under contract for four years in a row before ‘ER’ happened. He’s one of the few who remembers the people who helped him.
Leslie Moonves
We really love all sports, but we don’t think in the long term. The reason we did Kingpin was because there was a script we really liked and we saw the possibilities.
Peter Farrelly
That’s the thing about the script, is that how these people were affected by their decision, and how it could ultimately kill them, and I mean literally.
Kevin Williamson
And then we’ve got Blades of Glory, and we’ve got Brothers Solomon, and I’ve got a script in development with this guy Chuck Martin who used to write on Arrested, and, you know, we have a few things in various stages of development.
Will Arnett
I’m a very visual person when it comes to writing music. I like to see something besides just a script, even if it’s just a storyboard or pictures from the set.
Ramin Djawadi
Anyway, he and I worked on the script together, and I must say he was a joy to work with. Very enthusiastic.
Arthur Hiller
The thing I noticed about Jack was when we did a reading of the script, just to warm up.
Amanda Peet
There were rumors I wasn’t going to die. The whole cast was sitting around the table reading the script. I fell on the floor – I’m not kidding. I looked up at Katherine Heigl, and she was crying.
Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Producers on Broadway approached us with an original script after relaunching ourselves as ‘A Great Big World,’ and wanted us to write the music. They asked us to make the music we would sing if we could, and so we can go a little crazier. We refer to it as ‘our music on steroids.’
Ian Axel
I was 15 when I read the script for ‘Earth to Echo.’ I thought it was amazing, and I couldn’t think of turning it down. It’s awesome for a kid from Brooklyn to have an opportunity to be on the big screen. And I had a great experience learning what the movie business is like. So, I’m glad I did it.
Astro
I still always think the greatest moment for me, as a writer, is when I press that button and send the first draft of the script.
Abi Morgan
When the script for ‘The Wrestler’ kept coming to me I said, This movie is so good if you put me in the film as a wrestler people are going to say, ‘No credibility, Hulk Hogan isn’t a good actor,’ whatever Hollywood thinks of me.
Hulk Hogan
What really makes it fun for an actor is when the script is good.
D. B. Sweeney
High-level actors can be all about their close-ups and the size of their trailers. I’d heard these horror stories of how a really powerful actor can come in and change your script.
Neill Blomkamp
They needed someone to write a script of The Great Gatsby very quickly for the movie they were making. I took this job so I’d be sure to have some dough to support my family.
Francis Ford Coppola
I think the first thing I consider is whether I like the script. Once that is done, the next thing I look for is my part in the movie. Many a times you come across good offers, but the part they are offering might not be challenging. So, I don’t take up that film.
Rani Mukerji
It’s a shame, but every time I get something scientific in the script, I read up to find out what I’m talking about – but then I’m on to the next script and it’s forgotten.
Jim Parsons
For me, being an actress, my responsibility is not to pay attention to all the noise around me and to pay attention to the script and the director and protect the character and try to tell her story the best I can.
Gal Gadot
The reflection of the flame in the glass seems to be touching the hand. And you feel the helpless fear of these dismembered parts. This sort of thing can hardly be visualized at the script stage.
Terence Fisher
I’ve been quite lucky in that I’ve managed to tick off a few of my dream roles, really. Beyond that, you wait for the next script to come in that will have the dream role that you don’t know exists yet, I suppose.
David Tennant
A horrible script 99 percent of the time means a horrible movie. But if you start with a good script, odds are you’re going to have a good movie.
Ricky Schroder
I was asked to do a reading of ‘G.B.F.’ and I loved the script. I thought it was one of the most amazing things I’d read, but it took a year to get a green light for production.
Sasha Pieterse
I would always rather do a mediocre script with a great filmmaker than a great script with a mediocre filmmaker.
Kirsten Dunst
I think that whenever there’s a good script we try to make that happen, but it’s all based off of a good story, a good script, but I don’t believe you should do it just because it’s African-American.
Babyface
I’ve never had a written script.
Don Rickles
Whether you believe it or not, you have to understand the politics. In every script, there is a political bend that the writer has included. Whether you like it or not, is on you. But it’s very important to know that politics.
Abhishek Banerjee
House was the first film where I had no influence on the script. I had to buy the script with the game rights.
Uwe Boll
The first thing that attracts me to any script is the writing. If I find myself becoming lost in a good yarn, then I feel certain that others will, too.
Anne-Marie Duff
Just like a script, you need to keep a business plan to yourself.
Preity Zinta
Once, I optioned a novel and tried to do a screenplay on it, which was great fun, but I was too respectful. I was only 100 pages into the novel and I had about 90 pages of movie script going. I realized I had a lot to learn.
Gene Hackman
Directors are our teachers, and I’m always craving to work with a great director. They’re pretty much the first thing that interests me about a project. Let’s put it this way: It’ll take me a lot longer to read a script if there’s no director attached.
Naomi Watts
I’m good with a script.
Mayim Bialik
I’ve been working on this feature script for Master Class, a play by Terrence McNally that won a lot of Tonys.
Faye Dunaway
Jerry picked up the technique of visualizing the story as a movie scenario; and whenever he gave me a script, I would see it as a screenplay. That was the technique that Jerry used, and I just picked it up.
Joe Shuster
When I read the ‘Country Strong’ script, I thought, ‘Can’t they just hand-double it? Can’t I just do the rest of the movie and not have to do the performing?’ It took me six months to learn to sing and play guitar at the same time.
Garrett Hedlund
We taped all this and then got it transcribed and picked the best lines or ideas or ways to take a scene. I’ve done that many times, and it can improve the script but also wreck a perfectly good scene.
John Schlesinger
On Disney, we stick to the script. But you go to the ‘Grown Ups set’ and it’s completely different. Same thing with Tyler Perry – it’s nothing but ad-libbing.
China Anne McClain
I’m an optimist; I always hope that each new script is going to be a great story.
Viggo Mortensen
Working with Danny Thomas was truly an adventure every week. Danny didn’t always say the words as they appeared in the script. I learned more by osmosis than by sitting down together. He was a force to be reckoned with: an explorer of television.
Angela Cartwright
The bottom line is, it’s a great script and that’s very inspiring and makes you want to overcome whatever technical difficulties you come up against.
John Crowley
With indies, all they have is their script and it’s very important to them. The characters are better drawn, the stories more precise and the experience greater than with studio films where sometimes they fill in the script as they’re shooting.
Mark Ruffalo
I read the script, and I knew it was a good part. It was written for a white actor. That’s what I’m up against – I have to try to make roles happen for me that aren’t written black.
Gregory Hines
All this flying around got on my nerves. But then I gave the script to Cathy to get her opinion. When she started to laugh, it was like ‘That’s it!’. I went to LA and I got the part.
Ed O’Neill
I love ‘Safe Men.’ Now it’s getting all this culty kind of – it just came out on DVD. That was awesome. I read that script, I never laughed so hard in my life.
Steve Zahn
Don’t say you want to be an actor and not know how to read a script. Don’t give up 15 minutes before the miracle comes. Everyone’s career ebbs and flows, especially if you’re African American. That’s the time to dig in and keep your instrument sharp.
Erik King
I’ve turned down jobs because I’ve said, ‘Honestly, I can’t find my way in. I can’t do it. I love you, as a director. I think the script is good. You deserve better than I think I can do.’
David Duchovny
When I do a novel, I don’t really use the script, I use the book; when I did Apocalypse Now, I used Heart of Darkness. Novels usually have so much rich material.
Francis Ford Coppola
The big lesson of Reagan is: To think that he was some sort of simple figurehead and didn’t do the thinking and simply read a script in front of him woefully underestimates him. Ronald Reagan was an extremely intelligent person with a real V8 engine under his hood.
Eugene Jarecki
I like to hold a book. When someone sends me a script, I ask for a hard copy or print one out.
Mario Cantone
I always find that it’s when a script is not detailed, then I have to do more work as an actor.
Steve Buscemi
I mean when I was working shall we say with Disney, you know they sent me the script for the film Hercules and I had to imagine what all the characters looked like. And to develop those characters, so nothing exists visually when I get the script.
Gerald Scarfe
I have always thought if you are going to make a film, it’s much better to have an original script that will play to film’s strengths.
William Boyd
I am only looking forward to good film script. It doesn’t matter if the role is a supporting or a standalone role.
Siddharth Shukla
This new movie, ‘Full Moon in Blue Water,’ I loved the idea of working with Gene Hackman, who is a great actor, but when I read the script, I threw it right into the trash can, because I didn’t like this woman. She was just a doormat.
Teri Garr
I love improv. ‘Crazy, Stupid, Love,’ the script was really great, but the directors were open to letting you try different things. And that felt like a muscle I hadn’t exercised in a really long time.
Emma Stone
I find that when you read a script, or rewrite something, or look at something that’s been gone over, you can tell, like rings on a tree, by how bad it is, how long it’s been in development.
Joss Whedon
I’m a sucker for a funny script. And then, as soon as I don’t wanna be, one comes along and grabs me.
Meg Ryan
I like to make all kinds of movies. I’d do ‘Ocean’s Thirteen’ with the right script.
Steven Soderbergh
It could be a great script but the director is not the right person for me to work for at this time. So there are a lot of elements that come into play and a lot of variables, but more than anything it’s got to be a great script and a great character.
Blair Underwood
Once you’ve agreed the script, you must be willing to go as far as it needs to go on set.
Ewan McGregor
I’m thinking about directing, but I know it’s a lot of work and I appreciate what directors do and I would like to be good at it. The opportunity has presented itself four to five times, and I usually said no because of the script.
Angela Bassett
I’ve always felt that I’m in a spontaneous business and if you script something, if you plan something, it will sound that way.
Al Michaels
I always believe that Kar-Wai has a complete script: he just doesn’t show it to us. He wants us to experience and explore the character. He gives you a lot of space, and you know every time will be a very long journey. You just live in the character, and that’s very different from other directors.
Tony Leung Chiu-Wai
When I first read the script a few years ago I thought it was one of the best written scripts I had ever read.
Victor Garber
When I get a new script my mom will read them and just be aghast. I think it’s hysterical.
Alia Shawkat
Every script I’ve written and every series I’ve produced have expressed the things I most deeply believe.
Michael Landon
I’d like to do the young cadet thing again for sure, but that’s why I wanted to do this, to see if I could do it. I took the scenes out of the script and put them together and read them as one little arc, story and that seemed to work.
Scott Speedman
There’s a film I did called ‘Front of the Class’, about a teacher who had Tourette’s. That was a beautiful blend of drama and comedy. There’s some great moments of levity in the script.
James Wolk
More of ‘The Bourne Identity’s script was taken from the events of the Iran Contra, which my father investigated for the Senate, than what was taken from Robert Ludlum’s novel.
Doug Liman
When you’re tied to one show, you are very much at the mercy of the writers, so you can suddenly get a script where you have a heart attack and die.
Alan Dale
I would love to direct a western. I love taking photographs and I’m always fascinated with angles. Also, my father was a film editor, and I have a talent for thinking of things that aren’t always in a script.
Johnny Crawford
When I get a new script, I write a record of how many costume and make-up changes I have. I cross-check them against the shooting schedule and then consult with the hair and make-up designers.
Gina Bellman
I felt the script of ‘Shivajinagara’ was perfect as my character is that of a good guy with shades of grey.
Adithya Menon
I don’t watch scary movies. Sometimes, even having to read the script and do an episode of ‘Grimm,’ I get a little tense because I know someone’s going to jump out of somewhere.
Bitsie Tulloch
Even the busboys at the restaurants have a script to give you. Everybody is in the business.
Robin Wright
I think that you can’t make a movie without a script. But you also can’t make movies without actors. You also can’t make movies without technicians. And there has to be just one person in charge of everybody, and to me that one person is the director.
John Frankenheimer
I’d love to see a good script of one of my books, in these years of animations and comic book sequels, and had so many written over the years, but none quite clicked.
Carl Hiaasen
It wasn’t the greatest script in the world, but not many people can say they’ve played a wicked king in a swashbuckling Arthurian special-effects monster movie.
David Thewlis
In my first film, we always tried to have a script and work in a normal way, but I was constantly changing things during shooting. Because I worked as a scriptwriter for 10 years, I understood that directors always wanted to change what was originally written, to improve on it.
Wong Kar-wai
Video game voicing is absolutely different from cartoon work. In cartoons, you’re almost always there with the entire cast, and the entire script is acted out in sequence. With video games, it’s you by yourself, in a room with a script you just got when you walked in.
Josh Keaton
What’s fascinating is that when you write a script, it’s almost a stream of consciousness. You have an idea that it means something, but you’re not always sure what. Then when you get on the set, the actors teach you.
Gary Oldman
I get work because I’m primarily a novelist but I’ve become script doctor. I can work back and forth between French and English.
Norman Spinrad
For me, being an actress, my responsibility is not to pay attention to all the noise around me and to pay attention to the script and the director and protect the character and try to tell her story the best I can.
Gal Gadot
As far as I know, if you take your time, write a good script and make a good film, then give the audience time, they will accept it.
Ajay Devgan
When I was a kid, I wrote to the BBC, and the producers sent me a huge package through the post with ‘Doctor Who’ scripts. I’d never even seen a script and couldn’t believe that they actually wrote this stuff down. It sort of opened a door.
Peter Capaldi
I’m not accustomed to doing films without seeing the script.
John Hurt
The best thing for me is, when I’m not working, is to be at home and to have a script or two scripts is better, and to be just walking around the house and just thinking about the lines.
Christopher Walken
I thought ‘Borat’ was a breakthrough comedy, because it was really funny. It wasn’t some studio-produced script with 14 writers.
Steve Martin
I think a badly crafted, great idea for a new film with a ton of spelling mistakes is just 100 times better than a well-crafted stale script.
Alexander Payne
Three years into getting ‘The Witch’ financed, I was hanging out with my brother and he was like, ‘I’m working on this script. It’s a ghost story in a lighthouse.’ I thought, ‘Damn, that’s a really good idea, I wish I’d had it.’
Robert Eggers
I didn’t want to play a rancher. I didn’t want to have a cowboy hat on; I wanted to get away from that in the things I do. But I read the script and fell in love with it. As hard as I tried to say no, I couldn’t.
Tim McGraw
I think that my script, if it gets used, would be great. But if it doesn’t, I think it inspired them.
Rae Dawn Chong
Sin and forgiveness and falling and getting back up and losing the pearl of great price in the couch cushions but then finding it again, and again, and again? Those are the stumbling steps to becoming Real, the only script that’s really worth following in this world or the one that’s coming.
Brennan Manning
In daytime, you’re shooting an episode a day, which is on average about 90 pages of script a day. That is very hectic. On ‘90210,’ you get to work through it a little more. You’re not just flying through it just to get it done.
Trevor Donovan
I think with the smaller-scale projects, the burden for success falls more squarely on the shoulders of the actors and the director and the script.
Alexis Denisof
The script will point you in certain directions and I go the opposite if I can. I try do do one thing and tell a different story with my eyes. I believe what’s more interesting is always what’s not being said.
Robert Carlyle
I would love to occasionally do English-speaking films, but the script is as important for me as the director.
Audrey Tautou
I think a playwright realizes after he finishes working on the script that this is only the beginning. What will happen when it moves into three dimensions?
Don DeLillo
I don’t have any ego, and I will go and audition for parts if I’m offered an interesting script.
Huma Qureshi
The stories have been told so often by those of us who supported President Reagan over the years that they seem mundane, almost like a fictional novel or a movie script.
William L. Jenkins
Me and Johnny Rotten have been talking about doing a movie of his book, No Irish, No Dogs, No Blacks. We have a script, so hopefully that’s going to happen at some point in our careers.
Penelope Spheeris
It’s difficult when you have to turn down a tremendous amount of money because you don’t like what the script is saying and you don’t have any money.
Tim Robbins
There’s something about somebody’s first screenplay: it’s like their whole life experience has kind of been bottled into it. They bring so much richness to it. And not that they won’t do that for their next script, but there is something about their first experience and the time that it’s been floating in their head.
Valerie Faris
I’m a huge Emile Zola fan, and when Bill Gallagher said he was writing a new character for ‘The Paradise’ and had me in mind for the role, I knew I wanted to play Tom Weston before I’d even read a word of the script.
Ben Daniels
The fun stuff comes when someone is not so strict on sticking to the script. You’re allowed the spontaneity, and great moments can happen.
Jennifer Aniston
I’m doing another Churchill. I did a Churchill for HBO and that was up to 1939 and there’s talk of the war years. They were going to do it this fall, but the script wasn’t going to be ready.
Albert Finney
I remember going to Bob Preston’s dressing room because I was losing a laugh – as you do in a long run. He said, ‘Give me the script. That’s where you’re going off the road.’ That’s comedy. It’s never the line itself; it’s in the foundation.
Jeffrey Tambor
I’m probably one of the worst actors as far as preparation goes, because I actually don’t prepare. I find it easier to read the script and whatever hits me in my stomach, like deep down, I just go with it. And the director kind of molds me whether to go right or left with it.
Jaimie Alexander
Basically, the actor’s job is to pay attention to the script.
Joe Morton
I always try to stick to the script because I want to respect the writers, and I want to respect the director. But if the director and my fellow actors are okay with me playing with it a little bit, then I definitely want to play with it.
Rob Riggle
I really would have been stupid not to have done it. It was also a film that was actually happening, I mean, Miramax was doing it, and it had a kind of legitimacy to it. And once I read the script, I was there.
Adam Arkin
There were no surprises, because when you sell a pilot based on a pitch, no matter how great the script is, it’s going to look different and feel different from what someone imagines in their head. There will always be varying degrees of disappointment or confusion.
Jennifer Konner
Well, usually, when you’re doing a sitcom, you get a script and every word or for the most part, is written. So, you know, if it’s a 30-minute sitcom, then it’s a 35-page script or something like that.
Cheryl Hines
When I auditioned for ‘Pitch Perfect,’ I didn’t know it was a singing movie. I didn’t read the script. I go to the audition, and I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s a baseball movie.’ But then I’m reading the lines, and I’m like, ‘This doesn’t seem like a baseball movie.’
Adam DeVine
I don’t think I would be a good actor! People enjoyed ‘Dancing With the Stars’ because I was myself, and every time they told me to say something, I would say my own words, so I don’t think I could follow a script well!
Helio Castroneves
I love it when actors come to you with a problem and you have to listen. You’d like them to just get on with it, but it often means that there’s a problem with the script.
Jane Campion
The thing that I look for in a script – I’m not looking for anything next because you never know where life’s going to take you, so you can’t just expect, ‘I want to do this next.’ So I’m not expecting anything; I’m just hoping.
Julia Garner
I’m a big ‘Breaking Bad’ fan – if I’m not in the script, I like to experience the show with the rest of the world. I’m ready to be shocked.
Steven Michael Quezada
On ‘Stranger Than Fiction,’ the script was so good that I stuck to every line because it was just such brilliant writing from Zach Helm that I felt like I really just want to shoot the page.
Marc Forster
I always feel that if you put me in a room with a director and a writer and let me talk about the script, I can give a good account of myself.
Daniel Radcliffe
I prepared the script of ‘Pataas’, when working for ‘Kandireega’. When I approached Kalyan Ram with the script, he liked it and said that he will produce the film with a big hero.
Anil Ravipudi
I dropped the script in the fireplace, called my agent and said, they can jail me, sue me, but I’m never acting again, unless I can do something worthwhile.
Piper Laurie
‘Quick Change’ was my first real movie. It was an interesting audition process because there were no lines in the script. Bill Murray’s character would say something, and Geena Davis and Randy Quaid would say something, and then it would just say, ‘The cabbie speaks.’ How do you audition for that?
Tony Shalhoub
You stick to the script, the script is Bible.
Jennifer Garner
When I read a script, I try not to judge the characters. I try to have an open mind and really see what it makes me feel.
Penelope Cruz
I was very happy sitting alone at a dining room table, writing a script.
Conrad Hall
When I read the script of ‘Karu,’ there was a spark within, and I instantly connected with the story. I was emotionally attached to the story. After we finished shooting, I was so attached to the kid who played my daughter, I wanted to adopt her. That’s how strong my emotional attachment was with the role and the story.
Sai Pallavi
Even as an actor, I think like a storyteller. My parents raised us to look at the script.
Jake Gyllenhaal
Since when I was little, I would always write a script and tell my sister, ‘Read this line. I’m going to film it.’
Sadie Sink
What I do is just go over and over and over my lines and learn the script so well that I can just be easy and relaxed. That’s the way I always work.
Anthony Hopkins
Bush is a very poor impromptu speaker. He does fine in small groups but when speaking without a script in front of large groups or answering questions he wasn’t prepped for, he has problems.
Peter Schuyler
If you get a book which is 600 pages, you have to reduce it to a script of 100 pages. In two hours of film, you cannot possibly include all the characters.
Dino De Laurentiis
Things have got to add up to 100 points. The script is part of it, the character is part of it, the people I’m working with is the third part of it – and any combination of the three has got to add up to 100 points.
Alan Arkin
I need to react to a script, to feel strongly about it in some way. And I need it to be a complex character for sure. And also, I think a lot about what kind of audience there is for the film, what they’re looking for and ways to connect with them in the playing of a character.
Jeremy Renner
You pick projects for the part, the director, and the script. I just want to do different, interesting stuff.
Daniel Radcliffe
I read every script from beginning to end, and I read every draft that I can. I like the show, I like the character, and I want to protect both of those things.
Victoria Pratt
No one ever gets to write their ending, write their final script.
Greg Olsen
When I choose a script, I ensure that I get to contribute to the film in some way and, in turn, grow as an actor in the process.
Sai Pallavi
Finally, Colin Farrell showed up on my doorstep, only he wasn’t Colin Farrell – he was just this Irish kid who had read the script and wanted to do it.
Robert Towne
I had heard that Robert Duvall was interested in doing ‘Lonesome Dove,’ and he’s one of those actors with whom I’d work on any project. So I tracked down the script and started to bug the producer, Dyson Lovell, to get in there.
D. B. Sweeney
I’ll read a script maybe twice, but I’ll think about the role more than I’ll rehearse lines.
Patricia Clarkson
When I get a script, it’s the only time that I get to be an audience member with the first-time experience of that movie. That’s the first and only time.
Dennis Quaid
Whatever happens in my life from now on, I know the day I finally die – the final act of my script – people will always make references to the work I’ve done with Almodovar.
Antonio Banderas
I don’t work very much, and I just sit here waiting for a script that I can’t refuse – and I’m not talking about money.
Michael Caine
It’s a hard thing to do, to be given a script, and know that you’ve got to turn up on the first day of the shoot – generally without having had any rehearsal – and present a character. It’s really baffling; it’s incredibly hard to know how to begin, to approach it, other than just thinking about it.
Emily Mortimer
I always write the script by myself.
Bong Joon-ho
I’m not one of these actors who can make a bad script good. Some actors, a script can be terrible, and they can bring something to it and make it really special. I can’t.
Eddie Marsan
I think one of the major things a director has to do is to know his subject matter, the subject matter of his script, know the truth and the reality of it. That’s very important.
Robert Wise
The worst is when I talk myself into something. Sometimes you take things because you want to work with a certain actor, or you want to work with a director, even if the script or the part’s not that great.
Jessica Lange
I usually choose movies that I would want to see. I appreciate drama and if the right script came across my desk, drama you will see.
Danny McBride
I hope to be involved in a successful movie script.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
There are a lot of roles in Shakespeare, basically. If I feel that the script is a movie, I would be interested in doing any role of Shakespeare’s.
Al Pacino
I’m doing a Dylan Thomas film, Map of Love, with Mick Jagger producing again. It’s a wonderful script.
Dougray Scott
Script comes first, then the actors, then you gotta be lucky enough to get the right time slot. Then people have to watch.
James Burrows
No one looks at your hands to see how much they shake when you are interviewed to be a surgeon. The physical skills required are no greater than for writing cursive script. If an operation requires so much skill only a few surgeons can do it, you modify the operation to make it simpler.
Atul Gawande
I started to work on a feature-length script about pirates in Somalia, but I knew that there was something I was missing, which was that I didn’t know what day-to-day life looked like and felt like in East Africa. So I decided I had to go.
Cutter Hodierne
When good things come in, my agent calls or sends me the script. But I allow them to sort through the offers so that I am not just sitting and reading everything because honestly, sometimes the scripts that appeal to me are projects that are not good projects, but I just really like the script or the characters.
Megan Fox
Why hire these geniuses if they’re forced to stick with the script? You want to empower your actors as collaborators.
Shawn Levy
And I’m auditioning right now for a movie, and then I have a script that I’m reading right now for a horror film, and I’m meeting for a couple of television shows that I just had yesterday, and pretty much was offered one of them.
Trishelle Cannatella
Oh I am trying to remember, we would read the script after we did the show.
David Selby
When you’re playing a real person, there’s a balance between playing the person in the script and playing the person as he was in life. You have to be respectful and true to who that person was, but at the same time tell the story in the film.
David Tennant
You can’t start a movie by having the attitude that the script is finished, because if you think the script is finished, your movie is finished before the first day of shooting.
Steven Spielberg
As soon as I saw the script for ‘Moonlight Drawn By Clouds,’ I thought it was fun, and I really wanted to do it.
Park Bo-gum
I did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay. It was probably harder for a regular director. He probably had to read the script the night before shooting started.
Preston Sturges
Inside me, ‘Dragon Ball’ became a thing of the past, but later, I got upset at the live-action film, revised the script for the anime film, and complained about the quality of the TV anime. I guess, at some point, it became a work that I like so much that I can’t leave it alone.
Akira Toriyama
How I envy writers who can work on aeroplanes or in hotel rooms. On the run I can produce an article or a book review, or even a film script, but for fiction I must have my own desk, my own wall with my own postcards pinned to it, and my own window not to look out of.
John Banville
The script was just the best I’d read in a long time and I love the humor, which I wasn’t expecting, and I like the fact that my six year old daughter can see the show without being, you know, protected from it.
Stephen Collins
On ’24,’ it says on the front page of your script: ‘This script is for the production staff and cast. Please don’t show it to anybody else.’
Colm Feore
Sometimes you do a film because the script is amazing, sometimes you do it because you get to work with amazing people, and sometimes you do a film because they pay you money.
Sean Patrick Flanery
It’s funny. When I saw the script in my inbox and it said ‘Sparkle,’ I thought, ‘For real? It’s really called ‘Sparkle?’ I was wondering, too, how does ‘Jordin Sparks as Sparkle’ sound?
Jordin Sparks
I read the script. If I like it, I would do anything I am asked to.
Sushant Singh Rajput
Sticking to my schedule, I’ve gotten over seven months ahead, which allowed me to write a ‘Pearls Before Swine’ movie script for the big screen.
Stephan Pastis
Actually, it was first a movie called Gale Force, which was a hurricane movie. That script never came together, and then the same deal was replaced with Cliffhanger.
Renny Harlin
When I read both pilots for ‘Breaking Bad’ and the ‘Michael J. Fox Show,’ I turned to my husband in real life, and I’m like, ‘That is an amazing script.’
Betsy Brandt
Could I have worked under a system where there were Draconian controls on my creativity, meaning budget, time, script choices, etc.? Definitely not. I would have fared poorly under the old studio system that guys like Howard Hawks did so well in. I cannot.
Michael Mann
I love shooting, when the character is interesting and the script is interesting, but the research beforehand is really fun. The whole process makes me anxious and restless, and I have trouble sleeping, just trying to figure out the character.
Matt Damon
I think if you get your fifth script made, that’s the fast track. But there’s no guarantee any of them will get made.
Geoffrey S. Fletcher
Poetry is a phantom script telling how rainbows are made and why they go away.
Carl Sandburg
I guess people feel that if you’re working with good directors and are known in the Hindi film industry, then you won’t work in South films. However, I believe that films have no boundaries of language, religion, or cast. If it’s a good script and a good director, I can do a film in Spanish as well.
Aditi Rao Hydari
Often in television, you read a script and you’re amazed that you get the scene given to you.
James Wolk
I’m very interested in any script that makes me laugh.
Alan Tudyk
I just think Australia tends to make very good movies, so if someone hands me an Australian or an American film script I would guess the Australian film would be more intriguing.
Barbara Hershey
You need the words, you need the script, you need the material, you need the commitment, you need the passion, it’s like we depend on writers, we depend on producers, directors depend on us and once things are in the divine order as they happen.
Nia Long
Even when I’m reading a script where I’m supposed to be looking at the lead role, I’ll find myself gravitating toward some small weirdo in a few scenes instead. I’m very instinctive like that and I love the challenge of not having a lot of time to create someone who feels real.
Melanie Lynskey
My approach to acting is that I am totally intuitive. I read the script and I get it. If I don’t get it, I can’t do it.
Morgan Freeman
My Brilliant Career was beautifully directed, but I had a bit of trouble with myself in it. It was a silly script, based on a book this 16-year-old girl wrote.
Judy Davis
I remember that when I got to NYU, everyone was writing scripts. But I was 18 at the time, and when you write a script, so much of it is about what you pull from life, and this sounds sort of cheesy, but I felt like I didn’t have enough life experience at that point to write a movie.
Todd Phillips
Everything you do on set is directly related to your imagination when you read the script for the first time.
Ewan McGregor
People always say a script will be ‘brought to life in a magical way,’ but for me that has been proven wrong time and time again.
Ginnifer Goodwin
I’ve been involved with some huge studio projects that have been bloody awesome. It all starts with a great script, doesn’t it?
Juno Temple
I was concerned about doing a sequel and repeating myself. That was before I read the script.
JoBeth Williams
Since when I was little, I would always write a script and tell my sister, ‘Read this line. I’m going to film it.’
Sadie Sink
I liked it because it was such a dangerous script and showed just what human beings are capable of. Here was a movie in which Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt, who always win in every movie they ever do, simply don’t win. I felt that was outrageous for a commercial movie.
Kevin Spacey
Hopefully, as I get older in the business, I make my choices more accurately, and I perhaps know from either the script or the first meeting that it isn’t going to work.
Ben Kingsley
The script for ‘Infamous’ was so poised between tragedy and comedy. It’s a dream part. One reads those scripts with a sense of melancholia. When you read a script that good… I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this script is too good. They’ll never give it to me.’
Toby Jones
You can have a million dollar, 20 million dollar budget or 60 million dollar budget, and if you don’t have a good script, it doesn’t mean a thing.
Tippi Hedren
A lot of the time the film chooses me. I’ll be working and I’ll get a call from my agent and I’ll get the script and then tell him what I think.
Jodi Lyn O’Keefe
I consider my job as a screenwriter to pack a script with possibilities and ideas – to create a feast for the filmmaker to pick from.
Jonathan Nolan
Your instincts for what’s dramatic are the same whether you’re working on a drawing or on a script.
Peter Falk
I was studying my ‘Bold and Beautiful’ script the other day, lying in a hammock, when one of my Siberian tigers walked up and grabbed it out of my hand – she wanted to play. See – teeth marks!
Tippi Hedren
When I do a movie, I have the script. I know how it begins and how it ends. I know what my character does and where he’s going. If I have ideas I want to express or changes I want to make, there’s one guy: the director. It’s different in television.
Holt McCallany
Nobody taught Picasso how to paint – he learned for himself. And nobody can teach you to be a producer. You can learn the mechanics, but you can’t learn what’s right about a script or a director or an actor. That comes from instinct and intuition. It comes from inside you.
Dino De Laurentiis
I can now tell from the envelope whether or not it is a good script.
Peter O’Toole
I would consider doing any part as long as the script is good and the film has an interesting director.
Daniel Radcliffe
But when you’re writing a script – for me anyway – you have to sort of create an enforced innocence. You have to divest yourself of worrying about a lot of stuff like what movies are hot, what movies are not hot, what the budget of this movie might be.
David Cronenberg
You don’t necessarily need a script or actors to tell a compelling tale. Finding a person at a key moment in his life and rendering the truth as you see it – that’s the truest form of drama.
D. A. Pennebaker
I’d rather say no and have said no and do say no often. I walk away from projects if it doesn’t feel right; if it’s not the right team of people pulling in together or if the script isn’t right. It could be a great idea but the script doesn’t work.
Blair Underwood
It was, when I read it, I thought, such a beautiful script. I loved the story. I thought it was well handled. I thought it was even more moving because it was a true story and that made it even more poignant.
Jennifer Connelly
Many times, when a director reads a script and wants somebody who says ‘Far out’, then they let me do what I want with it and that’s usually more interesting for an actor.
Katherine Helmond
There was one film that I really wanted. This was a long time ago; it was a film called ‘Fracture.’ Ryan Gosling ended up doing it with Anthony Hopkins. It wasn’t a giant box-office success, but I really enjoyed the script, and I enjoyed the character. I got pretty close and was kind of disappointed it didn’t go my way.
Chris Evans
And when I’m on set, I’m just thinking about the script and of working. I think I’ve stayed focused on the work so much that I haven’t really noticed my life start to change except for I’ve gotten busier.
Jennifer Lawrence
When I read the script, I liked the script very much and I thought it was a marvelous part for her, because I think it is a change of pace. I mean, we know how wonderful she is in romantic comedy.
Albert Finney
If it’s an excellent script, I enjoy it tremendously, the acting part of it.
Julie London
You know when you’ve found a part that you want to play. You know it because the part takes you over. It sits in the script waiting for you to play him.
Peter O’Toole
Sometimes I want to do something that’s really funny and other times I read an indie script that is going to be made for nothing but I want to do it because I think that I can connect with something in the story.
Brittany Snow
Almost every script that I’ve gotten has been for sort of the generic Hollywood type. I haven’t chosen them. All the ones I have chosen are because I’ve been fascinated with the source material or because of the script.
Ben Barnes
At the end of the day, my bread and butter comes from films, so I have to work in films that may not have a great script, but give me a fat pay cheque.
Paresh Rawal
I had written the script for Juno and apparently Steven Spielberg had read it. I can’t just call him Steven, that’s weird… Mr. Spielberg had read it and he liked it. He asked me if I would write this television show for him and I said, ‘Yeah!’
Diablo Cody
With a film, you have to pare down and take stuff out and squish it all down into a 110 page script.
Melissa Rosenberg
My mum reads every script before I go for it.
Chloe Grace Moretz
‘EastEnders’ keeps me so busy – that is where I’m at and I can’t see that changing too soon. There’s nothing that has quite got the punch of an ‘EastEnders’ script.
Steve McFadden
There’s one great script that hit my desk that I didn’t change at all, and that was True Romance.
Tony Scott
I am always open to working with debutant directors, as they bring a new perspective to a script. That motivates me and helps me choose unique scripts.
Nayanthara
You can over-think things. If the script’s good, everything you need is in there. I just try and feel it and do it honestly. I also don’t learn things for auditions, because I feel like it’s just a test of memorising rather than being real.
Olivia Colman
I sketched out a rough story for them and the director said, well it’s a good story but we have the go-ahead from Universal to make this script and did I want to do it. I said no, and they left.
Ellen Burstyn
To ask a pratfall comedian, a dishes-in-the-face comic like me, to lay back and bring none of that stuff to the script because it doesn’t call for it? That’s tough.
Jerry Lewis
There is always something funny going on between scenes with Adam Sandler. He’s always cracking jokes and yelling at people for no reason. It’s pretty funny. He’ll joke around during scenes, too. When he guest-starred on ‘Jessie,’ there was nothing in the script that he said first take.
Cameron Boyce
As much as most of the actors were kind of curious to know what their character meant in relation to the script and to the plot, they really were quite happy to be part of the adventure of not knowing.
Radha Mitchell
Memorizing a playbook is like memorizing a script. When they change the script at the last minute it’s like changing a play in a game.
Michael Strahan
‘The Fighter’ was about a family struggling to overcome and fighting each other sometimes, and I went back and rewrote this script which I had written for my son initially because my son has mood disorder.
David O. Russell
Originality is, for me, the most important quality in a script.
Douglas Wood
It’s all about the script. Reality is key to me and less cutesy.
Jimmy Fallon
When I’m the one who sits down and looks at the blank page and writes it out all the way, then I’ll call it my script.
Edward Norton
I hadn’t worked for a year when I had my Prison Break audition and it was the easiest audition I’ve ever had. I got the script on Friday, went to the audition on Monday and got the part on Tuesday. I was shooting the pilot a week later. I didn’t have time to be nervous – it happened so quickly.
Wentworth Miller
Acting’s incredibly enjoyable, but sometimes it doesn’t feel quite enough. I’ve also written a script about the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine. This will make me sound like a female Kenneth Branagh, but I can’t think of anything nicer than directing myself from a script I wrote.
Honeysuckle Weeks
To be honest, I never went to school for acting, and I never learned to break down a script. I took acting classes my whole life, but they never taught me anything about acting. They just taught me about myself.
Shailene Woodley
What they told us about ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ when we first started was that we were guaranteed 26 episodes, so that was the longest job I’ve ever had. And that was basically it – we didn’t know what the premise of the show was going to be and we waited, week by week, to see a script.
Marina Sirtis
I turned down the first script offered to me, and the second. I lay on my back one day under an umbrella, in the garden, reading the third, and wondered why I had turned down the first.
Conrad Veidt
Of course, I’m not allowed to talk about the script, but I can say it is a really good story.
Aaron Stanford
The script is the coloring book that you’re given, and your job is to figure out how to color it in. And also when and where to color outside the lines.
James Spader
With a terrible script you hustle and try to make it better. But with a good script it can be trouble because you rest on your laurels, so to speak, you think it’s going to translate easily.
Robert Downey, Jr.
I’ve never ever read a script. I really must read Macbeth, because I was in it once. I got a lot of laughs in that, I can tell you.
Tom Baker
Somebody wrote a script around us, but Dustin Abraham came with the best one.
Method Man
My manager got the script for ‘Under the Dome,’ and I read it and just fell in love with the character. I grew up on Stephen King, and I love his whole aesthetic of the classic American story with supernatural events happening, so it just made sense.
Alexander Koch
I found Hollywood pretty bruising and uncreative. The executives are all in thrall to the boss, and spend their times double-guessing him or her, and trying to remember what he/she said and then applying them to the script, whether it was useful or not. They’re all in fear for their jobs.
Deborah Moggach
Triple tonguing? It was sort of invented. It wasn’t in the script. It was something that I came up with.
Famke Janssen
They’ve got this house style which is writer driven. I heard of one person who sent his script in, and Karen Berger said there weren’t enough words in it. Put some more in.
Eddie Campbell
Well, I love TV, and I love a good script.
Erica Durance
I got the script for ‘Real Steel.’ I started reading and saw that it was about robot boxing, and I was immediately turned off. It’s not my thing. But I continued on, and by the time I got to the end of the script, I had chicken skin and tears in my eyes. I thought, ‘Man, we don’t make movies like this anymore.’
Evangeline Lilly
I was a little bit wary of playing Nicholas. In the script, which I think is true of the novel and the film, he’s the only character not singing and dancing in a musical style. Playing someone who is the personification of good is a little difficult.
Charlie Hunnam
I don’t think I had a script on ‘King Kong.’ But usually you read a script and then you go and audition for it. It’s rare when there’s no script. I sort of like the latter better, because I’m more successful at it.
Kyle Chandler
I look for the character to be something interesting, the script to have a good story and be original, and a director that I admire.
Josh Hartnett
I usually don’t choose any of my Tamil films depending on the heroes but give priority to the script.
Aishwarya Rajesh
If there is a book that the script came from you have to read it, you have to see what you can get out of it: mood, back story and things that may not even be in the film. They kick off your imagination and broaden the character, I think.
Miranda Otto
Whenever I read a script, I start recasting the role that I might play. I’m like, ‘God, this should be played by Domhnall Gleeson, not me.’
Aaron Taylor-Johnson
I am a fan of all genres. My big thing is to serve the purpose of the script and what the director wants. If it’s a comedy, I want to be funny; if it’s action, I want to bring the action. If it’s drama, I want to be the catalyst for that drama. That’s the fun part; it never gets boring being an actor.
Terry Crews
We shot in a place called Asheville, which is like beautiful, beautiful forests. And then part of it we shot all the reaping stuff, which was just crazy – because the reaping in the book and in the script is such an emotional thing for everyone. It really did feel like that when we were shooting it.
Liam Hemsworth
I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. So for me to do that, it would have to be a story worth telling.
Taylor Swift
In the year and a half I was on SNL, I never saw anybody ad lib anything. For a very good reason – the director cut according to the script. So, if you ad libbed, you’d be off mike and off camera.
Harry Shearer
It’s too bad about ‘Dark of the Sun.’ It was really about Tshombe. When I read the script, I thought it was going to be a political movie, and I thought we might even have a hassle. But the director simplified it to brutality and bad taste.
Jim Brown
I knew her work very well and I knew that if she offered me a role in her movie, it wouldn’t be something stupid. So I agreed to do the film before I read the script.
Beatrice Dalle
I think it’s always challenging to look at a script and make it your own while maintaining the sense of what the style of the show is.
David Boreanaz
And that’s what I really love, is finding a script and fantasizing and going to a different world and kind of portraying a character that is interesting. Because other lives interest us, that’s why we read magazines like ‘People’ and try and fascinate and drool over what other people are doing.
Alex Pettyfer
A different script calls for different things. It always takes me a long time to get to know the part, and know the logic behind the words. I have to be with the script for quite a long time before things start to fall into place, before they become part of the character.
Sally Hawkins
My sister and I said, Dad, are you doing to do anything about that? And he mentioned treatments other people sent him that he’d been working on. So we thought it would be kind of cool to give these guys a real script.
Rae Dawn Chong
Personally when I listen to a script, I think from the audience’s point of view. I would ask myself whether they would like to see me in this role?
Uday Chopra
The green-light meeting, when I first started at Paramount, would consist of maybe three or four of us in a room. Perhaps two or three of us would have read the script under discussion.
Peter Bart
When Raghavendra Rao garu approached me to do a film on Lord Venkateswara, my initial response was ‘What more can we do than Annamayya?’ But he asked me to go through the script, and I really liked it.
Akkineni Nagarjuna
When an actor asks you to read his script, your heart sinks. The number of scripts I’ve been given by actors that are so unbelievably terrible!
Richard Grant
One of the nice things about the world of filmmaking is that you make friends in the business. Sometimes directors feel a script needs something, but they’re not sure what it is, so they show it to a friend; if the friend is a writer, he ends up kicking around with that script for a while.
Tom Stoppard
If making movies was easier, there’d be a lot more good movies. So you kind of learn that if it’s just a good script, or if it’s just a good producer, that’s not always enough. You need an entire team of creative people coming together.
Chris Evans
It was cinematographer George C. Williams who first told me about ‘Sakhavu.’ He said that the script was good and asked me to listen to it. Later, Sidhartha Siva called me and narrated the script over the phone.
Aishwarya Rajesh
We all write, but the script is a blueprint. We can lose whole scenes when we’re shooting.
Shawn Wayans
Unfortunately, the public might not know that we get a script usually two days before shooting. So sometimes I’m shooting an episode and don’t even know how it’s going to end because I haven’t read that yet.
Fisher Stevens
I don’t write anything off without reading a script, and if it’s a good one, I’ll consider it, whether it’s for $20 or a million dollars.
Martin Freeman
When the script for ‘Once’ came my way, I had the thought that maybe it will last only a season. But I was willing to take that risk.
Lana Parrilla
‘King of California’ was just, I thought, a really great, fresh, original kind of script. I loved the tone, the mix of tragedy, comedy, and drama, and that it was a good part.
Michael Douglas
Televison is time bound. Whereas a movie has time. You can’t write a script for television and keep it for one year.
Siddharth Shukla
I keep drawing inspiration from people every day. All of a sudden, something strikes me so hard and dramatically, and then a dream comes – I sit down, cut it off and make a script out of it.
Dev Anand
If it were all in the script, why make the film?
Nicholas Ray
You look at the part in ’12 Years A Slave,’ you finish that script – I mean, it’s a powerful story. You go, ‘Man, I have to play a bad character in this.’ And then you go, ‘Well, do I want to play a bad character and contribute to a good story?’
Paul Dano
When I read a script, if I feel it’s written with the idea of just bashing other people, then I shy away from it. Sometimes it’s some guy coming out with his own hatred, and I don’t need to be a part of it.
Faran Tahir
Ensure that your script is watertight. If it’s not on the page, it will never magically appear on the screen.
Richard E. Grant
When I take on a role, all I tend to do is get to know the script and ask millions of questions, and keep fine tuning what I think the character is trying to say.
Sophie Okonedo
As a rule it usually takes three or four readings for me to be interested in a script, and if I’m interested I’ll read it three or four times before I make a strong decision.
Chris Cooper
I have always believed that chemistry can’t be created between two people. You either have it or you don’t. The script can only enhance it.
Deepika Padukone
I always look for the character that gets into your guts and tells you, ‘You have to play this.’ You have to be brave enough to let everything else go and let the character guide you. When I read a script, I look for that kind of pull.
Colin Morgan
I can’t imagine directing from someone else’s script.
Tony Gilroy
I have a very good memory for scripts. I can watch a show I like once, then remember about 90% of the script. But ask me who was in it, and I wouldn’t have a clue.
Marcus Brigstocke
Your body – or my body – is just kind of stupid. Like, your body doesn’t know whether you’re acting something because it’s happening or whether you’re acting it because it’s in the script.
Zach Woods
I’ve been spoiled by this project. I was given the script and went in to read, realizing that this was a powerful story and one that wasn’t told very often.
Wentworth Miller
There have been a few times when I’ve read a script and it’s really cool but the girl character’s just kind of pathetic. It’s not going to do me any favours just being ‘the girl’ in a cool movie.
Emily Browning
Script for an actor is like a bible. You carry it with you, you read it over and over, you go to your passages.
Cameron Diaz
I get a script and it’s really interesting with scripts, because you never really know. It’s paper and it could be great or awful. Even scripts that are good could end up not working.
Amanda Bynes
You have to trust that the script is right and be comfortable with everything, and then you just have to go for it and disregard anything you’ve previously heard or felt about it.
Sam Heughan
I was deliciously happy filming ‘True Blood.’ I even kept all the scripts in my office, which I never do with any script. Although I did shred them all in one go when the series finished; it seemed like a ritual, somehow.
Michelle Forbes
There was a time when I read a script and I just got excited about the possibilities.
Joaquin Phoenix
Generally, if a good script comes in I read it, and if it appeals to me, it appeals to me. And it doesn’t have to be anything – it doesn’t have to be the main character, it doesn’t have to be a huge part. It could be a nice cameo – anything that I think is good and surrounded by good, enthusiastic people.
Alison Doody
I get involved with projects based on three parameters – the script, the actors involved and the director.
Dominic Monaghan
It doesn’t help anybody to put out a bad script.
Victoria Pratt
I love to be creative and to put flesh onto the ideas that are inside of me. And there are not that many great programs that are coming out through Hollywood, and I’m tired of waiting around for someone to hand me a good script, so I’m going to go and produce something.
Kirk Cameron
I’m a filmmaker; I want to make films. I don’t want to sit in a hotel room waiting to make films, and I can control my thing in Denmark; I can make the film I want to make… of course, I have to write a good script, all that, but if I do my job, it will happen.
Tobias Lindholm
Sometimes I get a script that says, ‘Only you can play it.’ But I like roles in films with little moments – a hand movement in ‘Melancholia.’ I don’t like the big speeches – the ‘Oscar speech.’ I like to do unusual things on screen.
Udo Kier
I love the script and I just thought it was a great role. Like I say, it’s like this – the script is like this sad, funny, desperate love song to the lost American man.
Oliver Platt
We thought we’d write a good script for women, giving them the fun roles that generally men get.
Lilly Wachowski
Frankly speaking, it’s only the script that matters to me the most. If I like the script, then I just commit to myself and go ahead with it. But I also look at the commitment and confidence of the director of the film because it’s him who will shape the film.
Vidya Balan
In ‘W,’ I did not change a word in the script. I have never spoken this much in other series. I just stick to whatever is written. I always carry the script with me and read it before I sleep.
Lee Jong-suk
Most actors go, ‘I read the script and fell in love with it’; I fall in love with the directors.
Sam Worthington
I do actually dabble in a bit of poetry! And I’m yet to pen a script, but it is something that I’ve been telling myself I want to do.
Luke Treadaway
There have been times – and not just on ‘The Newsroom,’ but on ‘The West Wing,’ ‘Sports Night,’ ‘Studio 60’… – where it was hard to look the cast and crew in the eye, when I put a script on the table that I knew just wasn’t good enough.
Aaron Sorkin
You can’t make a good movie with a bad script, no matter who’s involved.
Dave Franco
I got a script sent to me at this office and I got a call from a woman – Universal’s doing a snowboarding movie. I’m not in it yet, but I’m supposed to meet with the director in New York soon. I’m waiting to hear back from them.
Jason Mewes
I’ve seen a lot of friends who have a lot of great projects, whether it’s a script or a play or whatever, and it is a great project and they have great people involved, and they can’t make it.
Philip Seymour Hoffman
I remember my dad working with me on breaking down my script and writing out a back story for my character and all that stuff.
Jason Bateman
People don’t think of genres anymore. The script is all that matters. And as long as it appeals to my sensibilities as an actor-producer, I’m on.
Abhay Deol
Improv plays such a huge role in finding great lines – you’ll be surprised at what comes out of your mind inadvertently. A lot of times it’s better than a script you’ve worked out ahead of time.
Nick Swardson
The truth is, a director wins an Oscar for a writer’s script and actors’ performances.
George Cukor
They sent me the script, asking me to play the part of a general. I have never played the part of an authority figure. I’ve never thought of myself that way. I was uncomfortable with it, but I worked at it and knew I had a guttural voice for a general.
Mark Goddard
