Matt Bomer Quotations

Kids aren't born to be bullies, they're taught to be bullies.

Unfortunately, in some parts of the country, some kids are taught at an early age that being different is somehow bad or wrong or worthy of ridicule.

If you're wearing suits and you want to create your own sense of style, get to the tailor.

Everybody thinks that equality comes from identifying people, and that's not where equality comes from.

I think every guy and girl would love to get to play Superman at some point in their life.

To be honest with you, my physical state is usually dictated by the project I'm working on at a given time.

There's always a need for new superheroes. As society changes, the types of superheroes will probably change as well.

I can safely say that I had an incredibly difficult and trying past growing up and trying to be an artist and standing up as who I am in this world.

My favorite actors are people who I don't know anything about, and I can project any character onto them.

Look, none of the artists who I admire or respect have ever shied away from a role because it might make them unpopular with somebody.

My standard uniform is a T-shirt and jeans.

What we really have to do is stop the adjective before the job title - whether it's 'black actor,' a 'gay actor' or anything actor.

I'm a kid that went to theater school. I thought I was going to be making my living doing plays regionally or in New York or on Broadway, and maybe if I got lucky I would do a movie here or there.

I pretty much got busted for everything, but I definitely stretched out my boundaries as a kid, as well.

Activism isn't beautiful and easy, or a bunch of people getting together and picketing; it's a lot more complicated and difficult than that.

Cote de Pablo is one of my best friends! We went to college together.

I don't think it's a bad thing to go out there and challenge yourself as an actor.

I like to just work with great directors.

I never feel more confident and comfortable than when I'm wearing a Tom Ford suit.

I think when you play a role, you always have to be a defense attorney for that character.

I'm completely happy and fulfilled in my personal life.

Just being attached to 'Superman' actually gave a great boost to my career.

Well, when you're playing a role, you have to think, 'What is ultimately motivating the character?'

When I was in high school, there was no safe haven, there was no outlet for you to speak your mind.

For some reason, they always gave me a fat suit in high-school productions. If there was a character who needed to be robust, they gave me a fat suit, and I put on a silly voice.

I don't know anybody who walks through life all the time in the doldrums, constantly serious and morose. But that's become what we generalize as drama.

New York City is one of the greatest places on the planet. You have the best in food, art, theatre, and definitely people-watching.

I don't care about the size of the roles, or how they're marketed or billed or anything like that. I would love to be a part of stories that tell us about where we've come from, where we are, where we're going - with great directors.

I have, like, three suits to my name. But one thing I've learned is that when you dress up in real life, people treat you differently.

I think anyone who's ever gone through adolescence and wanted something from their parents knows the basic tenets of a con.

I want to work with anyone who's passionate about telling a story. I obviously have a list of people I really love, but it's a really long list.

Playing athletics, playing a lot of different sports, going to drama school... I was one of those kids who wanted to do everything, so I ended up being pretty average at everything.

My personal life is a source of incredible happiness for me, but it's personal, and it's not for me to hock or shop around to the highest bidder.

I think if you start to think too much about things that are completely out of control, it will just drive you crazy as an actor.

While I feel that I have a great reservoir to draw from as an actor for lots of different roles, it is difficult because it can be an industry where it's people's jobs to thin-slice you really quickly and try to fit you into a niche in the market.

I'm from a very athletic family, and I thoroughly enjoyed sports as a kid, but acting was a way of expressing myself and having fun. It was something I found on my own.

I really just try to focus on my job, which is to be an actor, and outside that, the cards fall where they may, and on not getting caught up in how people react to certain things. That's a death trap creatively.

I consider 'White Collar' my home base. I'm so lucky to get to play a character that's very multifaceted and the writers take risks on and never get into a staid process with.

The last thing I want to do is having someone get behind a Montgomery Clift biopic, and then just do the first script that came out. Sometimes it takes a long time for these things to gestate. And I'm only going to do it if it's the right story that's told for the right reason, and that's relevant to this day and age, as much as it pays homage to who this man was. Should that happen during the time when I'm still young enough to play him, perfect. And if not, hopefully someone else will get to play him because I do think it's an incredible story.

I love that Amazon has this incredibly unique, diplomatic process where people's voices are heard, and we're using this great interconnectedness we have, via the internet, to weigh in and to have a say in what we want to see and what we don't.

I took movement classes that I wore my double-breasted suits to. I worked on my elocution because people spoke differently then. I was really trying to toe the line. I think that if I had spoken exactly the way that people spoke back then, it probably would have alienated people

I at least felt the obligation to speak clearly [in 'The last Tycoon']. This is pre-Brando and pre-James Dean. Nobody mumbled back then.

I very comprehensively studied Irving Thalberg and his biographies. He's who [Scott]Fitzgerald roughly modeled the character after. He worked for him, as a writer, when he was at MGM. And, of course, I revisited the novel and the politics of MGM and the studio system at the time and familiarized myself with the world. There was a great deal of physical and literary work that went into it.

I’ve been a con artist since I was 16 and trying to get my dad to buy me a car. I never succeeded, but I learnt a lot of tactics.

My parents raised me right, so I always open doors for people and try to have good manners.

When you are the avatar for the writer/director, a lot of times, I just trusted him. If he had a choice, even if it wasn't necessarily what was my first impulse, I was like, "This guy [Billy Ray] has been living with this for two years before I even came on board, so I'm going with him."

Anybody who is rude to anyone in the service industry is automatically out.

I see myself working, making a living and doing projects that I'm passionate about, regardless of the medium.

What is ultimately motivating the character?

I’m a pretty chill person. I’m kind of a homebody and I like to just hang out with friends and have dinner. I’m not, you know - I’m definitely not Neal Caffrey in the sense that I’m not, you know, drinking a $500 bottle of wine at a nightclub. I’m just - I’m pretty chill.

I think Billy Ray has a lot of great stories up his sleeve. I've heard a lot of his plans for the show, should it go forward, and I think there's a lot in store for people, if it's given a chance.

The best experience for me at CMU was being on stage so much, getting that comfort ability and learning that technique you can use with any type of work because you’re comfortable with it and know your skill as an actor.

I like characters with flaws, who have shadow.

For every role, I brought certain elements of the character. Even on White Collar over six years, I tried to keep the set fun and breezy and Howard Hawks-y and very of the tone of the show.

Billy [Ray] is a preternatural enthusiast. He would say things to me like, "Now, let me tell you about Episode 3." I'm a big superstitious, having done television for quite some time, and I would say, "Billy, I can't wait to hear about it, but let's just stay here for right now, see what happens, and enjoy this moment.

To me, when you're at a hotel and your home environment is ultimately dictated by somebody else, I always find that a little bit oppressive and scary in a way.

I lived in several hotels, yeah. You have to try to make it home.

I think your text [script] is everything; it's what informs you; it's what gives you the given circumstances. Then you take that and you add your own creativity and your own spin on things and you make it personal. That's what makes that character and that text unique to you, when you personalize it. I think that's where your job as an actor comes in.

Having done television for almost 20 years now, a pilot is kind of like a rough draft. It's like bringing people into your ultrasound and hooking up to the monitor and going, "Isn't my baby beautiful?" "Yeah. I can only see the outline of it, but it looks like it might be."

Certainly when you're dealing with more deep emotional work and sensory work, for me it helps me to just stay in it.

Forget horror icon, Kety Bates is an icon. She's an acting icon. I was raised on so many of her films, everything from Misery to Fried Green Tomatoes to Delores Claiborne, all films that I've watched multiple times and been inspired by.

One of the many things I love about working with Ryan Murphy is that you're always thin-sliced in this business. You walk into a room and people want you to be how you look or how you're perceived or whatever it is in that 10 minutes that hey meet you. I think Ryan [Murphy] has an intuition that looks a little bit deeper and sees things that other people might not see in you - sometimes you might not even see in yourself - but that he knows are there and that he might want to get to grow and stretch with as an actor.

I look at a pilot and go, "I see the landscape. I see the characters. I see the direction and the potential of the story." And I also go, "That didn't work. I could change that. Maybe that works. I don't know. We'll see." For me, I look at it, as an actor, as what can I improve upon? So, to have it out there and judged solely on its own merit is really a unique experience for me.

For me, a lot of these actors are new. For me, I only worked with Finn [Whittrock] and Michael Chiklis. So a lot of these actors are people I've been a huge fan of for years and are bucket-list actors for me to get to work with. It's pretty surreal now getting to step into scenes with them.You all get to find your characters together.

In that Freak Show environment, I got to spend time with so many of the actors who were part of that world. I just had the best time ever.

I've never cared about how successful or how big I was going to be. I just wanted to be part of a story that affected people, made them laugh or cry. To me, that was more important than having my face on some billboard.

When you really put your heart and soul into something, the temptation is to try to be in control of circumstances, however you can, and looking and seeing how people are responding.

I like not to know, unless it's something that I need to know, specifically, for how I color a performance.

It's so rare, especially as a younger actor, to find a role where it's not just one-dimensional and it's not just a stock leading man.

Theres always a need for new superheroes. As society changes, the types of superheroes will probably change as well.

I think every guy and girl would love to get to play Superman, at some point in their life.

As actors you're always going to take certain roles that are in your comfort zone and take ones that aren't.

If you don't like Superman, something's wrong with you!

If you gave your best to what you were given, at the time, it's going to play out how it's going to play out.

If youre wearing suits and you want to create your own sense of style, get to the tailor.

Don't worry if people think you're good. Make this your experience. And find out what makes you unique as an artist. You don't get the opportunity to do that as much in the real world.

Without a safe haven, one of the most authentic parts of who you are, who you love, felt invisible to the world.

I'm a long time [Scott] Fitzgerald fan, as probably everyone in America is. And I've always been fascinated by that theme of, what is the price of the American dream and what parts of your soul do you walk away with? The conflict of art versus commerce was also very interesting to me.

I like to sing and leave songs on voicemail. It comes from the heart.

I had just finished reading The Day of the Locust when this piece was brought to my attention, and I was like, "How do you create art in the system, the way it is?" Looking around the studio film landscape, there are all of these great superhero movies, which is fantastic, especially for my kids, but it's hard to find real art house films in the studio system, these days.

It's better to be in love than watch it.

My personal life is a source of incredible happiness for me, but it's personal and it's not for me to hock, or shop around to the highest bidder. Plus, it could never live up to the amazing mythology that everyone online has created for me, so I'll keep mum about it.

I really saw Pat Brady, Kelsey Grammer's character's point of view that it's a business. It's show business. So, it was an incredible opportunity to work with really wonderful creatives and the script was fantastic. What was so interesting to me about the studio system was that a lot of the politics that were in play then are so really relevant to today.

Human beings are good, they have shadow, every single one of us has redeeming qualities and every single one of us has qualities that people can hold against us. That’s what makes us human.

What we really have to do is stop the adjective before the job title—whether it's 'black actor,' a 'gay actor' or 'anything actor,' Everybody thinks that equality comes from identifying people, and that's not where equality comes from. Equality comes from treating everybody the same regardless of who they are. I hope the media and the press catches on to that because it's time to move out of 1992.

Never forget your manners. They go a long way in both your business and personal life. If you look and act like you are making an effort, it will be appreciated.

You can't please everybody. There's that old saying that there's no sure formula for success, but the only sure fire formula for failure is to try to please everyone. You're not going to do that.

I like strong opinions - I'll take that any day over someone who agrees with everything.

I’m so thankful to have been born in the times that we live in. I felt a responsibility to Simon [Halls] and to our kids to be able to live with integrity and not have some strange split psychology of This is who my dad is at home, and this is who he is to the public. That trumped any type of professional repercussions that it could have had. And – not by my own volition or choice – I’ve been playing exclusively straight characters for the first 10 years of my career. Whatever happens from this point on says a lot more about the business and society than it does about me.