Top 40 John C. Reilly Quotes

I hear actors complain about being stereotyped, and a lot of the time, you have yourself to blame. Just don’t take the part if you feel like it’s a stereotypical part for you. You have control over your life. We don’t have the old studio system, where you have to do what they tell you.

Surprising people is the key to career longevity for someone like me.

I kinda taught myself how to play guitar, and I still play to this day. It’s become a pretty big part of my life.

Once you become tagged as anything, it becomes difficult to shake it, because the less imaginative people in the business want you to do what worked for the last guy. That’s always been something I’ve had to deal with.

Hollywood is an illusion. These intense workplaces, with very close relationships, a few months at a time – and then it ends.

Really if you look at my filmography, there’s something for everyone!

Whenever I work on something, I try and throw everything I have at it. Then if the director finds it useful they use it, and if not, they ignore it!

I like being employed, you know. That’s my favorite kind of acting.

One of the reasons people find me a believable actor is that I don’t seem like one of the gods from Olympus. I seem like someone who was lucky enough to be let into Olympus.

A lot of people that make films say, ‘We need this kind of character. Who’s done it before? Get them to do it again.’ That is exactly what actors are pushing against. It’s kind of a cliche to talk about being stereotyped in that way, but it happens.

Hey, I’m just trying to become the Michael Caine/Gene Hackman of my generation.

Animation is a great way to work. No early morning call times, no make-up chair. In live action, you’re always fighting the clock; the sun is always going down too soon.

My family are all storytellers, and I think I inherited a lot more of that gene than other people in my family. I guess I was fun to have around.

I was a solid C student because I was doing so many plays. I was a drama nerd, but I was also kind of a Zelig-like character; I would shift between different groups of people. But the people I spent most of my time with were either chorus or swing choir or the drama nerds.

People say, ‘Don’t you get tired of people coming up to you all the time?’ But what’s wrong with strangers saying they love you?

When I first joined SAG, there was another John Reilly. My dad was John Reilly, too, but growing up I was John John. Nobody in life calls me John C. It’s more like, ‘Hey you, Step Brother!’

I come from a pretty working-class neighborhood in Chicago. Hard work was just expected of you. It wasn’t some noble thing you did; it was a prerequisite. It’s what a man did. You get up, you put on your boots, and you work hard. We’ve lost a lot of that, I’m afraid.

I’m not of the manor born; I’ve never felt entitled in that way. I just came to Hollywood to be an actor. All that lifestyle stuff is something to be managed.

God forbid you got seasick because there was no option to go back. So that really did force us to be a group.

I give as much as I can, and it’s up to someone else to turn it into a movie. Good luck to you!

I’ve never been someone who’s been given work because of the way I look or because I have some box office appeal. I get work because people know I’m swinging as hard as I can, trying to connect, giving it my level best. I have a face for radio, but here I am doing what I do.

There are a lot of actors in the world, there’s a small number that actually get to work as actors, and there is a tiny group of actors that are celebrated in the way that I have been. I feel incredibly lucky.

That’s one of the difficult things of being an actor that I’m still not used to. You have to go, you have to show up at these places where you know nobody, and sometimes with really impressive, high stakes people like Roman Polanski.

I was never a very dependable employee for anything. Perfect for the actor’s life!

I’m aware of how lucky I am. Being able to make pretty good money, and get to do a lot of fun work, and at the same time I’m not besieged by photographers.

I considered a lot of different jobs as a kid. I thought about becoming a priest or a lawyer. My father had a big linen-supply business and I considered working for him. What dawned on me was: ‘If I’m an actor, I get to do the fun parts of every job!’ Without having to go to four years of law school.

I don’t know how to be like a Bill Murray or a Will Ferrell, these guys who know how to make a line funny just by, I don’t know, some extra-sense perception. I only know character and emotion and real acting; that’s all I know how to do.

I would consider directing. I think directing myself would be tough, but I’m definitely interested in directing. I might start off directing a play before I move to a film.

I was a founding member of the ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ club at my high school. I was in chorus, I was in swing choir. I was an outcast but I was an outcast among a group of outcasts.

Being unprepared makes me nervous. I’m old-fashioned show folk.

When they’re good, I like working with new actors.

The truth is that filmmaking is not really an actor’s medium; it’s really a director’s medium, so all I can really control is the character that I’m playing. So I try to look for characters that are interesting and engaging and different than what I’ve done before and hopefully it becomes a good movie.

For a while I had a blues band in L.A., but I realized I was too optimistic to play the blues. I did not have the misery in my heart that the blues required.

If people want to see me in comedies, that’s fine with me.

I would love to do a western. I would love to play an explorer. That is always something that has really captured my imagination since I was a kid, like James Cook or Magellan or Earnest Shackleton.

Most boys’ first hero is their father. That was definitely true of my dad. He was a proud Irish American and he taught me a lot about ethics and responsibility. He also introduced me to a lot of wonderful folk music.

The thing I tried to remember when I was younger was ‘Do something that’s at least as good, if not better, than the last thing you did.’ So I started with Brian De Palma and Sean Penn. I had a pretty high bar to start with.

I was more like a middle child. My youngest brother was the baby, so he got all the attention that the baby gets. And my older brothers were getting into so much trouble that I was left in the middle, doing plays. I was up to no good, but my mother didn’t know it!

I don’t mind doing scripted material. It’s actually kind of a relief, because improvising is a little bit like screenwriting on your feet.

I am one of those people who is not very patient in the makeup chair. I have been offered movies like ‘Planet of the Apes’ and stuff like ‘The Grinch Who Stole Christmas’ and I turned them down.