Emile Hirsch Quotes

1. James Dean taught me not to speed, River Phoenix taught me not to DO speed, and Marlon Brando taught me to slow down on the cheeseburgers.


2. When I got a lap dance, because I was 17, they had to put a massive pillow between me and the girl when she was grinding me. It was weird, yet pleasurable.

3. It was very, very challenging being on this thing called the gimbal. It would throw you around, give you whiplash, and they'd tie you down.

4. (in reference to his shaved head for "Lords of Dogtown") People would be so intimidated especially when I left the tattoo on and went out to a party. You'd get weird looks from everyone. Big, big macho dudes would be like: "Oh, excuse me. Excuse me." I was like: "Yeah!" I mean, it was very strange for me to have people react to me like that. It's unheard of for me and to have girls going: "You're crazy." And looking at you from across the party like: "You're a crazy one." 

5. Well, when I was a kid and I watched "Speed Racer," I used to always watch it in the morning with my cereal. And when I ate the cereal, I would pour soda into the cereal because we never really had milk for some reason, I don't know.

6. I don't have an interest in any car that isn't good for the environment, other than maybe an aesthetic quality in a picture book.

7. There's something about the good-hearted guy fighting the system. I just love that. That's how "Speed" is. He's a really focused guy with a heart of gold and the corporations are trying to crush him and use him for his skills to make them more money.

8. If you give an actor any wiggle room to whine in situations where they want to whine, you're gonna whine.

9. (in reference to his hesitance in deciding whether or not to play his character Matthew Kidman in "The Girl Next Door") I don't really want to do a teen comedy, you know? I mean, I just didn't want to be in a bad movie, that's all.





10. On "Into The Wild" I spent months risking my life and on "Speed Racer" I spent 60 days acting in front of a green screen. No danger to my physical self, but I sure had to use my imagination.

11. I know what wanting and craving adventure feels like, I can really relate to that.



12. I identify with someone wanting something to work out, but not being able to get through the rocks to the river.

13. (in reference to his skateboard training for "Lords of Dogtown") I learned how to skate vert in pools and stuff. Now I can get on a board and skate a pool. We did three months of skating and surfing. It was surfing in the morning and skating in the afternoon. Tony Alva was our coach. He's not the easiest coach to work with. He's not like a coach. He tells you how to do it, and is like: "Just do it. Just f-ing do it, dude!"

14. I'm not a ball in a pinball machine. I know what I want.


15. I've realized that what you think of when you make a "big movie," if it's actually a green screen movie, it's like doing independent New York theater because you don't have any backgrounds or props. So it's kind of like making the lowest budgeted film you could possibly imagine, plus $100 million.

16. I don't really like the slogan "It boy."

17. I think I've always been half out of my shell and half in. Sometimes I can be extremely wild and sometimes I can be extremely shy. It just depends on the day.




18. The willingness to keep learning is, I think, the most important thing about trying to be good at anything. You never want to stop learning.

19. I remember when I saw "The Matrix" when I was 13, I saw it in the theaters, and I was so blown away by it. It was one of the most memorable experiences I definitely ever had in the theater.

20. Maybe you will be afraid and maybe you will fail, but the courage to take risks in any part of your life is, I feel, a very worthwhile way to live.

21. I'm not staying away from any genre. I'm trying to get scripts that I like.

22. Artistic ambition is important. And it seems it would be a great time to do some theatre, like a new extreme.

23. I was so grateful to have made "Into the Wild" before I made "Speed Racer" because on "Speed Racer" I was indoors every single day, every single scene, on a green screen. Some of the time, just to pass the time, I would think back to climbing mountains in Alaska. That really helped me.

24. I'm a very, very conservative driver.

25. I had the misfortune of getting what skateboarders call hippers. It's when you fall on your hip again and again and again, just the same spot. It turns into like a blue purple bruise and it's just torture because I had to keep on doing the same move, going around in the pool again.

26. Believe it or not, I got into the charismatic, shady, sly heart of Sedgewick Bell by watching CNN and C-SPAN.


27. "Brokeback Mountain" just blew me away. I'll always remember talking to Heath Ledger just after he finished that movie and he was going on about working with Ang and how incredible he was.

28. How much cooler was Oz than seeing the little dude behind the curtain?

29. A lot of the stuff in "Speed Racer" has never been done before, from it having a multi-tone, to it having a retro-cool family movie, to having the photo-realism with the CG-backgrounds and infinite focus the way they worked with these digital cameras, to even the color experimentation.

30. Especially these days where everything is so polite and so proper, I think that rites of passage are good.


31. There's something just so kind of smooth about politicians.


32. I've definitely had ideas and plans that sometimes exceed my means and capabilities.

33. We want to do for "Hamlet" what Baz Luhrmann did for "Romeo and Juliet" in terms of like a really cool kind of re-imagining.

34. In "Dogtown", skateboards are like bikes to the Chinese.



35. When you're reading Thoreau you look at Hollywood differently, let me tell ya!

36. The genres are widening. I don't think that there's as many limitations on the kinds of projects that actors can do as there once was.


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