Bill Pullman

My interest in theater really began in the \'70s when American realism wasn\'t really in favor. I really dreaded going into a play that had a toaster that worked. I just didn\'t want to see that.

I\'m fascinated by movies and enjoy that, of course, but always, the measure of how you are functioning in the arts was theater.

I love to prune. I have a physical need to do things.

I\'m a very discriminating shoe shopper. I only look for something special. In fact, I don\'t think I\'ve ever bought two pairs at the same time.

I\'m intrigued by a tough situation, and I try to do something with it.

I think Westerns are always so great for clearing out the clutter and the ambiguities, and getting right to the broad strokes of that kind of situation.

I never imagined myself in films. My benchmarks were performances I saw in the theater.

There\'s always a certain kind of homework you have to do when there\'s an accent involved.

It\'s astounding to me that in a country where there is an ever-growing divide between rich and poor, that people won\'t accept the need for regulation on banks and salaries and so on.

\'Zabriskie Point\' was a time when I was in a lot of change and flux, and these incredible visuals hit me like they had rearranged the organs in my body. The ending and the free-floating debris and everything is an image that burned itself in my consciousness.

We\'ve seen with Brexit and other things that there\'s a dark impulse to be petulant and frustrated with complicated solutions.

Some of the shoes I have are from movies - I have my workman\'s boots from \'While You Were Sleeping\' - while others are shoes I\'ve had forever.

I don\'t have a favorite fruit. There are things that thrill me each turn of the season.

There\'s something about Warren Wilson. You can gain a lot of very important things and skills that you carry over into whatever you decide to do.

You\'re always carrying something that\'s interfering. It\'s like static noise that doesn\'t have to be there, and you have to school yourself to clean that out.

I want to be scary, boring, philosophical, funny, touching.

A lot of people just ask me about how I can do small budgets and big budgets, but many actors do both. I think the more self-destructive impulse I have is doing so many different characters.

I was doing this children\'s theater play, and it was non-Equity. We were out of town to do it at the Kennedy Center, and it was always kind of, \'Well, the producers may have to turn this into Equity,\' and that\'s what happened. It was kind of a silly children\'s theater play, but that\'s how I got my card.

The idea of taking classic American stories and reinterpreting them for a time and place is not just commercially viable. These stories also carry a sensual nature of what it meant to be an American, and they deserve to be reinterpreted.

I was the kid who would join a sports team and be the biggest liability at first and a star player by the time the game got going. I just move very slowly.

There\'s something that comes into you that\'s so exciting when you\'re directing.

I\'ve never really been a television watcher and watched comedies, and I have gotten a number of invitations to be on television as the dad.

I never had any idea of going into movies.

I don\'t like this instinct of reality television to wear your lifestyle in public. I\'ve really always loved the anonymity of things.

I have never forgotten John Candy\'s generosity. He showed me how to be a gentle leader.

I\'m not the first one to say it, but that time onstage is a heightened sense of present tense.

I\'ve always been what they call a late bloomer.

If you are in an Edward Albee play, you say Edward Albee is the greatest playwright of all time... If you\'re in an Israel Horovitz play, you say Israel Horovitz is the greatest playwright of all time.

I\'m often confused with other actors. But the people who know my work don\'t have that problem.

I think about Laura Bush every once in awhile. She is a great supporter of the arts. I did a show at the Eisenhower Theater, and she would make a point of coming backstage. The relationship between Laura and George Bush was always that way where you felt like he was at his best behavior when he was in her company.