Quotes from Casey Affleck

I do think people do pick movies that reveal something about them that they aren't always aware of. If you ask them what kind of an actor they think they are, they'll probably tell you something different than what they've actually done.

Lots of movies don't kind of work as well as they do on the page.

Sometimes I pick parts because I think, 'OK, it scares me,' and that's an indication it's going to be a good movie for me to do. Sometimes that leaves me in a terrible... Well, it doesn't always pan out, you know?

I moved out to LA, got an agent, started auditioning. I didn't know anything about how it worked. And since I was really bad, luckily, I didn't get any of those parts.

If you look at the paths of other actors, most people have a curve where you hit it and there's a time where you make a lot of money and they let you make your movies, and then they take it away and it's gone.

One thing I don't do anymore is read or pay attention to the critical response, which is a bummer because when I started, and when I was in school, I loved to read old film criticism.

I guess people think if you're well-known, it's perfectly fine to say anything you want. I don't know why that is. But it shouldn't be, because everybody has families and lives.

When a performance isn't working, it's usually because the actor is trying to do something and they're not able to express their idea very well. It's a muddled expression.

After I left LA... it was like waking up. And so I moved back east and stopped auditioning.

A lot of the times, I end up having to do jobs to sort of pay the bills.

I feel like I've been picky through the years and would do one movie a year or one movie every two years, and I want to work a lot more. So if I can find something that just happens right away as a director, I'll do it if I really love it, but otherwise, I want to keep working as an actor and getting better.

When I was a kid, we didn't really leave Cambridge, which was the town where I grew up in.

Celebrity never really served me that well; it serves other people well.

I've chosen the parts that have interested me and parts that I thought I could do a job with but also were challenging and a little bit scary.

What I learned on 'To Die For,' I learned over the years that followed, when some memory from the shoot would bubble up to the surface of my mind, and I could see it from a new perspective. I would usually cringe when that happened.

A good leader needs to know how to follow.

I feel really lucky to have been able to not only have him as a brother - because I love him and he's such a smart guy and an interesting, fun guy - but also have a friend to go through and chart and navigate the waters of Hollywood, which can be kind of alienating and lonely at times just because everyone is always... you know what it's like.

The first thing that I remember auditioning for was a weather commercial in Boston, and I got the job. The idea of the commercial was that you ought to watch the weather in the morning so that you know what's gonna come later in the day.

Some people go to their job. That's the job they have; they have to do it. They hate their boss and their coworkers, this and that. It's hard to get along.

Part of the criteria for doing a project is that it's scary or challenging because at some point you go, 'It's too scary; it's too challenging. I don't want to do it.' But things that seem easy are never any fun.

Things are never crystal clear, but at some point, they reveal themselves to you. You just hope it happens when you're still on set.

The four movies I can remember seeing as a kid were 'The Elephant Man,' 'The Magnificent Seven,' 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly' and 'Mad Max!' Two of those are westerns. So the western genre is emblazoned on my memory from childhood, and those are two great movies.

Sometimes being an actor is kind of demanding in very different ways.

I am in the process of starting a nonprofit organization that gives rescued animals a home in a simulated wild environment and, for those who have been tested on, who are disabled, aggressive, etc., their own space to live out their days.