Quotes from Jonah Hill

I've never had issues with popularity. I was always a popular guy... I've always had friends and loved ones and everything, so it wasn't like, 'Oh man, I gotta fill some void that was left by high school.' I had a great high-school experience.

I believe in collaboration. I think that is the most entertaining and effective way to write for me, personally.

My heroes are Bill Murray and Dustin Hoffman. Those are the two actors that both do comedies and dramas, seamlessly. Also John C. Reilly and Philip Seymour Hoffman. They're all just great actors, neither comedic nor dramatic. They're just great actors.

New Orleans is like the bad-kid island in 'Pinocchio.'

I grew up with baseball; I played in Little League and went to games with my dad. But I, as I grew up, became more of a basketball fanatic than a baseball one.

All my friends were in college when I was making 'Superbad.' We were drinking beer and watching movies and eating pizza. It wasn't like I was going to nice restaurants or anything like that, and I lived like a frat guy. Eventually it was time to grow up, be healthy and be responsible. You can't live like a kid forever, you know?

I started writing and acting in these little plays and then I was discovered by Dustin Hoffman. He got me my first audition for a film he was in, called 'I Heart Huckabees.'

I'm an actor, I'm not a comedian, I never was a comedian.

It wasn't like, 'I'ma lose weight and start doing dramas.' I wanted to be healthier, and that was the impetus for wanting to lose weight - it's just about being healthy and feeling good.

I think this movie, 'Moneyball,' symbolizes becoming a man for me, and I think my character becomes a man. It's important to me: I'm becoming a man. I'm taking my life seriously. I'm taking my acting really seriously, and it's important for me to play adults. It's important for me to change and develop as I get older.

I assume everything I do in life is gonna be a failure, and then if it turns up roses, then I'm psyched.

I mean, I find things that happened in real life to be the funniest - things that you observe instead of crazy abstract things, you know.

I'm really proud of 'Moneyball.' To me, it's about feeling pride in a movie I made. I think when I'm an old man I'll be able to show it to my grandkids with pride. That's all I can really go for: making movies to please me.

I've learned through experience of playing different characters, some of whom were jerks, that when you play a character who is pretentious or obnoxious, in any way, it's important to knock them down a peg.

Once you make a movie like 'Superbad,' when it's popular and you're the lead, you get offered all kinds of things and there's a temptation to make bad movies either for the money or to maintain your relevance in pop culture.

Look, at the same time that I don't want to be a celebrity, I understand that when you make movies you put yourself out in the public eye. I'd be a baby and a fool to be like, 'Why are there cameras taking pictures of me?' when I'm on a billboard for a movie. I think that's a very absurd concept.

I run and do a lot of push-ups and eat healthy.

It's almost like, when someone plays poker for the first time, they might be a professional poker player out of ignorance, just accidentally winning. That was how it felt in my first stand-up appearance.

I always wanted to be a film-maker when I was younger, not an actor. I was an eight-year-old who dreamed of being a writer on 'The Simpsons,' which was a weird dream to have. But I started taking acting classes as a way to learn how to direct actors and I sort of fell in love with it.

Besides the fact that I make movies, there's nothing interesting about my life at all, unfortunately.

I don't watch like Sci-fi or things like that, I'm always more like real life is so endlessly fascinating to me.

The great thing about 'Allen Gregory' is that we try to make it really questionable that the things he says have happened, have really happened. We like that ambiguity.

I mostly like documentaries, so I always think things that happened in real life are so astounding that why would you make a movie about something fake.

I am a filmmaker fanatic. I have never been star-struck by an actor once in my entire life.