Ron Perlman Quotations

Distortions control my self-image, like they do for a lot of us. It's irrational.

I'm just trying to make up for lost times, and I have total awareness that when the work is coming it doesn't mean it's going to continue to come, so I'm taking advantage of this phenomenal period that I'm in now, to its fullest.

I think now that I'm in the autumn of my life, and I'm getting a chance of having an overview and looking at the shape of how things happen, when things happen, why things happen, I think it was fitting that I spent most of my early career doing mask work, because I just don't think I was that comfortable in my own skin.

My self-confidence didn't come from my appearance, it came from other things that I did. But certainly not my appearance.

I lost 90 pounds and my blood pressure went down to a normal level and the salt in my urine disappeared. And that was when I had to make the transition from fat character actor to thin character actor.

Living off the grid and being kind of an outlaw brings a dangerous reality.

Almost all of your life is lived by the seat of your pants, one unexpected event crashing into another, with no pattern or reason, and then you finally reach a point, around my age, where you spend more time than ever looking back. Why did this happen? Look where that led? You see the shape of things.

You back a big cat into a corner and somebody is going to get bloody.

I couldn't make it on the swimming team in high school. In fact, I got thrown off the swimming team and was forced to audition for the school play because they had at the audition about 35 girls show up and no boys, so my swimming coach suggested that I might be able to do the drama department more good than I was doing the swimming team.

I'm thankful to be breathing, on this side of the grass. Whatever comes, comes.

I just think that there are those people that their resolve is strengthened by what it is that's keeping them down, and there are some people that will buckle under it. You never know which one is which until you get into the eighth or ninth round of the fight.

I never direct myself, because I don't like working with me. I would punch me in the mouth if I had to take my direction.

Every time you get on a stage or in front of a camera, the whole exercise is about imagination. You're constantly depicting something that doesn't exist, and trying to find the reality of it. Once you settle on that premise, everything else is a matter of degrees.

I think in the early part of my career, the roles were so disparate that it never gave anybody an opportunity to understand my essence and what I would be good at doing, as opposed to what I would not be good at doing, so these little moments of beautiful things that were happening to me were consistent, but very few and very far between.

Really, I was such a late bloomer, I really didn't learn how to be me until I was in my late '40s, which is when I started playing roles that were closer to me.

I've never worked with a tail, that I can remember. But there's so much I can't remember.

I like to believe that everyone is born with the same skill set, and that it is the influences that one comes upon.

I say yes to almost anything that comes my way.

I'm fully aware that things that resonate and become real hits are the exception to the rule, so much so that I've wired myself for failure.

Let me put it this way: I definitely need to understand the villains I play. The best cause pain to anesthetize themselves against their own pain.

Season 4 can be deadly for a show that's been a hit show.

If something strikes me as insane and unjust, I cannot tolerate that.

I actually think it's harder to play vulnerability, because you're having to delve deeper into portions of your own psyche, what it is that makes you human.

I think there are a lot of technocrats in the business who would much rather work with just wheels and gears and machinery. Those things interest them more than humanity and I wish them the best of luck.

Some of the great characters that I've played had to be transformational.

You can change the circumstances but you can never change man's inner nature.

Well, I love acting, and I love acting quick.

Yeah, it's nice to get paid for therapy rather than having to pay $240 an hour for it.

You know, I don't read the blogs, or go on the internet, and I really just don't know what people are saying because... well I guess I'm afraid to.

There are always great deals of humanity in the characters that have been offered to me.

You do what you gotta do. This is not heart surgery. I'm not curing cancer. I'm just trying to put my kids through school.

The thing that's cool about the recording booth is that it's so perfunctory, so cut-to-the-chase.

I've never been pigeonholed and I've experienced so many different kinds of skin - what man will do and won't do, what you should do and shouldn't do. This is what's exciting about being an actor; where philosophy majors sit in classrooms or write books about human behavior, we're actually acting them out in front of cameras.

So much of my aesthetic was formed by my dad.

Somebody who doesn't care if they live or die is the most dangerous human being on earth.

It's really disgusting what Hollywood can do to a guy.

I've had biker clubs reach out to me whenever they knew I was in their city.

In the early '90s, when those little art films started coming out, we were introduced to Quentin Tarantino and guys like that, and independent cinema was something that everyone wanted to be a part of.

I don't think anything is ever going to replace the human heart and what that generates in terms of performance.

I feel as though my criteria are based more on how challenging the role is, it doesn't have to fit into any particular profile, is it something that I've never done before, and is it something that I feel like I can really feel challenged and therefore fully engaged in, and that's when the work gets to be the most fun.

I'm not a social rider. Strictly professional.

The luxury of television is that you get more than one shot at who you think the guy is that you're playing.

The only way to grab the attention of the audience is originality. We feed ourselves with franchises that's the opposite of what makes our culture multidimensional and interesting.

"Striking looking." That's a euphemism if I ever heard one.

Guys who are larger than life and theatrical and deliciously unpredictable - they're far more interesting than the good guys most of the time. They have these psychological layers that an audience can really cling on to, become fascinated with, much more so than these true-blue, one-dimensional, square-jawed good guys.

Cinema to me is like a religion. If I was going to have a religion it would be cinema.

I've always wanted to have my own studio because this is a way for me to finally take all things that I've always dreamt about and actually put them into action.

Look at the people who are coming to television Ridley Scott, Ang Lee or Guillermo del Toro - all these great filmmakers - actively put themselves back into TV. That's because the environment is very encouraging for bold storytelling, storytelling that you've never seen before.

You start talking about God and a lot of people are going to become very defensive.

None of us are any better than anyone else and none of us are any worse than anyone else, and we're all equal and whatever we can do to celebrate our commonality rather than our differences, which is what religion does, to me... religion just compartmentalizes people and makes everybody into a box.

I'm not religious, but I am spiritual. I have my own relationship with a being that I consider to be everywhere. All and everything. I don't need a church or a synagogue or a mosque. I don't need to kneel down, I don't need to stand up, I don't need to be hanging from a thread.

A lot of people have been bent one way or the other on that. I'm not going to weigh in on that; I'm happy to still be at large, I'll just put it that way.

I like playing interesting people, I like playing slightly twisted people. I like playing people who have large appetites who are kind of a bit larger than life.

I love showing up and giving a performance without the benefit of a lot of rehearsal or dissection. It's fun to me to act on a kind of instinctual level and go straight for the performance.

I like doing voiceover work. I just like it in general, because you're constantly working on a very first-instinct level. You show up, you get in front of the microphone, you look at the lines, you say the lines, and then you move on. You work on a really primal level, is what I'm saying. You don't have to shave. You don't even have to wear pants. But, uh, that wasn't your question.

I'm kind of one of these guys who wants to play everything once before it's all over.

I live in a bubble. I don't read the blogs, or go on the internet, and I really just don't know what people are saying because, well I guess I'm afraid to.

I'm continuing to do research into biker culture.

I expect that everything I do will be not watched or not seen. That way, I'm never disappointed when I become flooded with that reality.

I don't think that I've had a career like anyone else's, but there are hosts and hosts of actors whose careers I admire.

I don't ever want to be comfortable with anything I'm doing.

I do voicework all the time.

I, for one, am not nearly as engaged when I'm looking at something that's been completely drawn up on a computer that replaces anything that's in real time and real space. It just engages me all the less, rather than all the more.

Every job has a unique situational circumstance.

That's always been Guillermo's preference, is to have as much there practically as is humanly possible, and that digital graphic images are more a punctuation mark than they are a replacement.

I will not do a role that I don't think I can do, that I'm not interested in, where there's no humanity, that doesn't have any kind of handle for me at all because I know I'll just stink the joint up.

My whole mantra is, "Go big or go home." I don't want to just play a guy who dresses up. I want to play the person who threw down.

I've been a professional actor for almost 40 years.

I'll walk through fire to do what I do because the movie business, when it's right, is the coolest art form ever invented.

People are doing sitcoms on stage rather than theater. You go to the theater, and it`s as if you were watching a sitcom at 8:30 on Channel 4.

I've certainly been very blessed with opportunity.

I love to continue to challenge myself and put myself in situations that are slightly uncomfortable.

I've been busy and not busy, and busy is better. I've been busy, but I went through a lot of periods where it was lean for a lot of times.

You draw on your own childhood every time you tee it up as an actor.

The great thing about arriving at this age is that I don't even care about my career anymore.

I'm real comfortable around people, and it took a long time for me to evolve to that point.

Working at a job that you hate. Having a career and a life that you have no passion for. That's hell.

I've done millions of mediocre movies. I've done way more than my fair share. You do what you gotta do. This is not heart surgery. I'm not curing cancer. I'm just trying to put my kids through school.

I was working more on a primal, instinctive level. And it just seemed to suit me; it seemed to suit my concentration span, it seemed to suit my personal style of performance, and I have fallen in love with film acting.

Independent film is almost nonexistent right now, because all the distributers that used to love to put out these little art films are all out of business right now, because it costs so much to open a movie.

1% of the population has all the money and the other 99% have nothing.

As an actor or anybody as a human being, I feel more and more like I want to spend time doing something significant. Because what's the alternative? Spend your life wasting your time.

Fearless people are interesting to watch.

I've always felt there were aspects of me that were monstrous, and you can either hide from it or confront it, embrace it and understand that those are aspects that make you unique and define you and motivate you. You can either overwhelm or overcompensate for them -- but they truly define you as a human being...So that life became a question of either dealing with this monstrousness in one way or another...One finds a way to understand and make friends with that monster and understand that that's the very thing that makes you who you are. That's your emotional and spiritual fingerprint.

I had an opportunity to be in Frank's [Sinatra] circle, but I couldn't take advantage of it because I couldn't get over how awed I was by him. It was so uncomfortable for me because he meant so much to me, but I just couldn't be myself, so I fled rather than having those great nights hanging out.

I love great animation.

It's nice to get paid for therapy rather than having to pay $240 an hour for it.