Quotes from J. K. Simmons

I was in New York. I had been doing theater for many years, and then I got hired to a little part - they weren't calling it an extra, but I didn't have lines. It was a 'featured' part.

After the second and final time that I got hugely fat in my life and when I lost that weight six or seven years ago, I pretty much decided that I was going to stay in decent shape for the rest of my life.

There's another film - a little Greek movie - that hopefully is going to get some distribution here in the U.S., called 'Worlds Apart,' where I also play a 60-year-old guy who looks a lot like J.K. Simmons, who has a romantic relationship with an appropriate woman.

I play tons of authority figures, whether it's the dad or the cop or the boss. I think it's a combination of how I look, who I am.

I actually have a degree in music and was aware that music was a tool used in therapy. I didn't realize how far it had come since I was in college in the mid-seventies.

We all want to not repeat ourselves constantly, and explore the limits of our capabilities.

I have a degree in music, yeah, from the University of Montana. I studied voice and composition and conducting and all that.

I've been your yellow M&M for, oh, at least two decades or so, and I've done a lot of other animated stuff in between.

Seriously, who doesn't want to slap a 27-year-old movie star?

You can't play a guy who's just a snake, because what do you draw on?

Everybody does their homework, and we all come together and just knock it out. There are adjustments to make, and if you have actors who are collaborators and who really know how to listen and be in the scene together, than it works out beautifully.

My full name's Jonathan Kimble, but my parents didn't want to call me either. So for a while, I went by Kim, which is a name for a girl or a Korean person.

I'm not a fan of any genre but am a fan of movies that are intelligent and/or funny. That goes across all genres: a horror movie, a zombie movie, alien invaders, chick flick, or raunchy comedy. If it's well done, I'm a fan.

I went from being a jock to a hippie. It was a very clear-cut decision. I had to be one or the other. I had to forsake that other aspect of myself. Or thought that I had to, which is regrettable. Quickly, I was back in the pine trees with the hippies, listening to my Jimi Hendrix and my Janis Joplin and turning on, tuning in, and dropping out.

By the time I started doing TV and film, I was in my forties, so I wasn't going to do the young up-and-comer.

The best complement I ever got from the public or producers or directors is that I just totally blend in and become the character and they don't notice me and that the play happens or the movie happens or the TV show happens.

There's a kind of numbness, a sameness, a lack of motivation in 'good job' culture.

I'm just first of all looking for a part that's well written and speaks to me.

I don't often do a lot of that kind of research, but when it's something specific like 'Oz' - which I fortunately did not have a lot of experience with - I will. I read 'The Hot House,' about being on the inside at Leavenworth prison.

I started out as a singer and a musician, and I was taught that your job is just to get out of the way of Brahms or Arthur Miller or Shakespeare and convey the brilliance that they created.

I actually was a musician in college, a composer and singer, and really intended to be the second coming of Leonard Bernstein when I got out.

I like to act. Every other aspect of show business I find uninteresting.

People evolve and it's important to not stop evolving just because you've reached 'adulthood.'

It's OK to turn down stuff that isn't really interesting and spend the summer with my family.