A favorite cast? Lisa Kudrow, Anthony Hopkins, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, and my wife.
Academy says you did a good job, you can take it to the bank, you did a good job, you really convinced a lot of people. That counts.
Actors are really good at that stuff. We got into this because we have imaginations.
At the Oscars, the place is loaded with movie stars, but they're like 2% of the acting population.
Directors work 10 times harder than anyone else. Get paid a quarter.
Everyone hooks up with George Clooney. He's a genuinely cool guy. He's using his powers for good.
Get some Vanilla Extract. You know you need it.
Gimme anything, as long as it's grape. I'm sure it'll be good.
I can't get a movie started, but me and somebody else can. Sometimes they come to me first and I get other people involved, and then it can go.
I did a movie with Johnny Depp, Benny and Joon. I was hardly in it. Had a great scene with him that was cut.
I do them all for the money, I really do.
I don't go running up to the monitor when they have video assist.
I don't know much but I know this - don't close a hit play, and in LA you have to close a hit play. There's no audience space.
I don't like cartoony kind of violence. I haven't seen Kill Bill. I love Quentin, so maybe I will dig it, but it seems like it's run its course.
I find myself in this position - I have done these roles, and I'm not quite sure why I have.
I got an agent. He said, what do you wanna do, and I said, I want an Oscar nomination. That's your job, that's what I'm paying you for. And I got it.
I gotta admit, a lot of the books I read are on cloth.
I have a friend who has a little boy and he says no guns in the house, and he said the boy will take a Graham cracker and chew it into a gun.
I have a tendency to say yes to a script or no to a script. Not yes based on a rewrite.
I have to wait until I get a tape, so I'm kind of guilty of missing some of my own work. I don't think it's a good idea to watch all of it.
I joined the Academy before Fargo. I was already a member when I got nominated.
I saw Ron Rifkin do this thing, In Regard of Flight - it was a good play, but man, those actors. I wrote him a fan letter because of that show.
I still get rattled. I get intimidated a lot.
I teach a lot of acting classes, and people would always bring in American Buffalo.
I think I've been in situations where they looked at me and just see some rich white guy - they don't see me at all.
I think theater is powerful. The best experiences I had in the theater are more powerful than the best experiences I had in movies.
I was a dog in a past life. Really. I'll be walking down the street and dogs will do a sort of double take. Like, Hey, I know him.
I'll tell you this about the Oscars - they're real.
I'll watch it if there's something specific that I wanna see, or maybe early in the shoot I'll look at some dailies.
I'm a firm believer that character is highly overrated. Character is a trick that we do with the audience's collusion.
I'm a pretty good carpenter. I got a real nice shop, we built a house in LA and I have a shop of every boy's dream.
I'm also doing this movie called The Stripper And The Accountant. We have great ambitions for it. We sold it to Showtime.
I'm not against watching myself, but I miss a lot of it. I've got two little kids who we don't let watch TV.
I'm not good enough to do fine furniture, but I've got some projects going at home. I built an arbor out by our pool. Big sucker.
I'm proud of Homicide, but I was scared to death through the whole thing. I'd love to do it again without being scared.
I'm really proud of the writing on Door to Door, and I think that's the Emmy that meant the most - the writing.
I'm sure I have a process, but it mostly takes place in my dreams.
I've got a lathe, two of them, big ones. I could turn a Volkswagen on those suckers.
If I like the story and it's well written, and it's a character I want to play and they'll pay me, then I decide to do it.
It started with the Godfather, this operatic violence. I don't know.
It's plenty fun on the set. You get to say, I like the blue one rather than the green one.
Mamet is doing a film called Spartan. It's in the can. It's not locked, but it's close.
Maria Bello was the hot young thing at the time, so I hardly talked to her. Too shy.
Meryl Streep, she's won me. You know who else I like? Sally Field. She's such a babe. I'd like to do a romantic something with her.
Most of the piracy is from people with a video camera, or from the editing bay - it's not the screeners.
Most of the screeners I get are long after the films are already on videotape.
My age is catching up with me, but I do want to do a romantic comedy with my wife, Felicity Huffman.
My preparation is this: Try to read the script as fast as I can without reading any of the stage directions. I try to see it as a movie.
Ninety percent of the preparation we do as actors is just jive. It doesn't do anything.
Nobody became an actor because he had a good childhood.
Oh yeah, that's the Holy Grail, Pirates of the Caribbean. Johnny Depp, he's the real deal, isn't he? He doesn't get the girl, and he doesn't care.
Oh, the Globes, that's a big drinking event. You spend all night thinking how can you get out to get a drink.
On one hand, I've never had a real job. I got into this business and somehow, by hook or crook.
One of the tough acting problems with a role like this is that he is so inactive. You can't act nothing - you have to act something.
Rules are made to be broken. That script wasn't completed, but I'd just had a daughter and one word kept ringing in my head: tuition.
Showtime gives you this very small window of opportunity to sell the film as a feature if you can find somebody to do it.
Something screws up, no big deal. You just do it again. Jurassic Park is astounding because it's so technical.
Sometimes you get DP's who will throw you on the fire of ugliness for their shot.
Stephen King writes a lot of things that are really charming and quirky, and that are more ironic than horror.
That red carpet has to be felt to be believed.
The bar raises as you go.
The next big thing is going to the Oscars. You think you've made it when you get to the Oscars.
The only people who do plays in LA are people who can't get jobs in TV shows.
The only thing I'm worried about is when they're 14 and their shirts are up to here and their butt floss is hanging out. God.
The Spirit Awards are great too, they'll say anything because they're not televised. Another great drinking night.
There are some older women out there who are just knockouts, real beauties, and they're not getting the roles they should.
We all want to be 20 again and have that first sense of love.
We must admit that it is quite common that people do have affairs with their leading ladies and men.
We thought sex was free. Sex is not free. There's a price to be paid emotionally, physically, even legally. Sex isn't a casual thing. It's a huge thing.
When Fargo came out, I hired a publicist for the first time in my life. I thought, if ever I was going to make it, that was then.
When I first moved to Chicago, right out of college, I was a bartender for maybe a year.
When I moved to LA, I pretty much hit the ground running.
When I was in New York, I was making a living. We had a summer house and a car that I could put in a garage. That's something for a stage actor.
When I watch a film I get swept away. I don't really watch the camera.
When they said, Do you wanna do a big, fat Hollywood movie? it sounded pretty good.
When they say, imagine that the T. Rex is going to come and stick his head in there, pretty much anyone could make a face.
Yeah, I made it. It sneaks up on you. You're some schmuck and you wake up one day and you go, Good God, I'm the cheese.
He and wife
Macy originally set out to become a veterinarian at Bethany College in West Virginia, but after becoming involved with their theater program, he transferred to Goddard College in Vermont and studied acting under playwright David Mamet.
William H. Macy married actress
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