Quotes from J. K. Simmons

I've gone back and forth with fine-tuning the kind of conditioning I'm doing. Sometimes trying to shed weight and getting leaner and sometimes trying to pack on a little more muscle.

For me, if the words are good on the page, the rest of it comes from spending some time with the script, and not like you're learning lines but absorbing what the script has to offer.

I am who I am. I have a low voice, and I look like somebody's dad or boss or a police chief, and those roles come my way.

My aunt was so attuned to commercials that she could always identify the voiceover actor.

I never had intention of coming to New York or L.A. and actually doing more than scraping by - you know, doing plays. And as my career sort of progressed of its own volition, I did come to New York.

It's nice to be number one on the call sheet.

Music has become so ever-present in our lives. You can't walk through a shopping mall or go into a restaurant without what we used to call Muzak.

I've always believed, maybe naively, that 'The play's the thing.'

I do think you need to understand a character's motivation and perspective.

I never listened to the Grateful Dead as a teen; the only exposure I got was what came through the walls when my sister was listening to them.

With these big superhero movies, everybody is so tight-lipped about everything, there's a certain amount of just going on faith.

Maybe when my kids are grown up, I can go back to Broadway. It would be great someday, I suppose.

A lot of the stuff about white-supremacist groups was very family-friendly: 'We just love our people.' One the surface, you go, 'Gee, what's wrong with loving your people?' But when you love your people to the exclusion of everything else that's remotely different, that's when you get into trouble.

If I see a now-28-year-old woman coming up to me, she's probably thinking of 'Juno' because she watched it with her parents when she was 18 years old.

I don't think I've ever watched a movie to prepare for a role.

Most of my friends - when I was five, six, seven years old - their dads were working in an auto plant in Detroit until 5:30, and then they were sat in rush hour. They weren't around as much. My dad finished at three o'clock, so he was just around more.

In lean times, you get plenty of sleep, and you're not flying around everywhere.

I read a very romantic book when I was young, when I was in college: Rilke's 'Letters to a Young Poet.' And I've always felt that if you are in any kind of an artistic, creative endeavor, and you feel there's something else you can do for a living and be happy, I think you should do something else.

Generally, if I read something that I think is really good and that I feel a connection with and is right for me, I see and hear who the guy is, as manifested by me.

Almost every character I've ever played - and sometimes this is very conscious and sometimes it's not - I need to find what they love.

The retired L.A.P.D. motor cops who work set security now, all wear the same uniform, they're great guys with great stories, and they're great at their job, providing security on sets.

I wasn't a comic book aficionado at all when I was a kid, but my cousin Weed was. Every time we went to visit him on the farm, he had two really fun things: comedy albums and comic books.

Whether you need to like a character, I don't think that's necessary in order to portray him.

I just saw 'Men, Women & Children' last night, and it's a devastating movie in a lot of ways, but it's so well done, so well acted.