Peter Dinklage says Leonardo DiCaprio walked right past him in New York and nobody noticed "I was being harassed a little bit, you know, people mean well" "Leonardo DiCaprio walked right by me in a baseball cap and sunglasses." "God, they don't even know because they're not looking for Leo. They just see me" "the other 20% you just want to give them a lecture." Same hat, same sunglasses, same street. DiCaprio gets to disappear because nobody expects him there. Dinklage can't, because his is the face people are already looking for. From Flagrant with Andrew Schulz

Kathy Bates says she was sure she never thanked her mother in her Misery Oscar speech, then the interviewer showed her the tape "She gave up her retirement because I was born so late in life to them." "When I won the Oscar for Misery, she said, I don't know what all the excitement about, you didn't discover the cure for cancer." "Why did I think I didn't thank her?" "Because she should have had my life." "I wanted her spirit to come into me and enjoy everything I was enjoying because of what she'd given up." Her mom's whole review of the Oscar was that she didn't cure cancer, and Kathy still believed she had shorted her that night. Then she watches herself thank her mom at home, right there in the speech. Some people never stop trying to pay their parents back. You can hear it in how quiet she gets at the end. ft: @CBSSunday CBS Sunday Morning on youtube

Sally Field says Robin Williams shut down filming on Mrs. Doubtfire for the day when he found out her father had just died "I got a call from the doctor that my father had had another massive stroke." "But please lean down and tell him that Sally says goodbye." "I was doing the scene about the kids being taken away from the father. It was what happened to my father." "And Robin turned around and said, that's it for the day, guys. We're just wrapped here. We're done for the day." She went straight from that phone call to a scene about a family getting split up, and she was a child of divorce herself. Nobody on that set knew. Robin just noticed something was off and asked her. Then he did the one thing the guy at the top of the call sheet can always do. He ended the day and walked her out himself. More than thirty years later she still tells it like it happened last week. ft: @people People on youtube

Helen Mirren says she put off becoming an American citizen for years because it felt like a betrayal of being British "I resisted for many years because I kind of felt it was a betrayal of being British." "But I didn't fully grasp the fact that you could actually have two passports." "They do a lovely thing when you arrive in America with an American passport." "They say, welcome home." This is the woman who won an Oscar for playing the Queen, and her big hang-up turned out to be fine print about dual citizenship. Once she figured that out, she went for it. Of all the things that could make Helen Mirren cry, I would not have bet on passport control.

A shirtless guy with a huge beard is driving a kid past mansion gates in an old luxury car, and he pitches his big plan: he's going to make the kid a famous TikToker. The kid asks what TikTok is. He admits he's never been on it. Then he talks himself into a haircut, a new tattoo, new clothes, and somehow lands on being a rapper shooting a music video. Full confidence, zero clue. That's the whole charm of this scene. T BIRD movie streaming now

An action hero who can't get hurt is the most boring thing in movies. John McClane spends half of Die Hard barefoot on broken glass. At one point he's sitting in a bathroom pulling shards out of his feet and asking Al to tell Holly he's sorry, because he's not sure he's walking out of that building. Rocky goes the distance with Apollo Creed and still loses the decision. Indiana Jones gets beat up in almost every fight he's in. That's why those movies still hold up. You believed the guy could lose. Now a lot of big action movies hand you a hero who gets hit by a car, shakes it off and makes a joke. Nothing costs him anything, so nothing means anything. The fights get bigger every year and you care a little less every time. I'll take a guy limping into the third act over a guy who was never in real danger, every single time. Who's the last action hero you watched and honestly thought he might not make it?

Ben Affleck says promoting a movie by doing interviews actually makes it harder for people to believe you in the role "My take is that promoting a movie by doing interviews actually makes it harder for people to like your movie" "It is. It’s the It’s the paradox. Like you have to go out and tell people to do it, like then it’s kind of like, well, now I know, for example, you’re like, oh, Ben Affleck, he’s just this guy and, you know, it’s It becomes harder to believe that I’m like running for mayor of LA or having some other marriage" "That’s why I always feel like I don’t really want to know like what Daniel Day-Lewis kind of had for lunch because, you know, I I like really believing him in the performances, but you kind of you kind of stuck" "I don’t I don’t think I’m all I’m aversive. Like I said, that’s different than elusive. I’m aversive to this process, but mostly just because I feel self-conscious and a little bit shy"

Christian Bale says he kept prepping for American Psycho even after the studio kicked him and Mary Harron off because he refused to let the part go "I went a little bit psycho myself in that and I just said, ‘no, I’m still making the film.’ And even though other people were cast, other directors were on board, I just kept on prepping and I would call Mary up and she would say, ‘Christian, they’ve given it to other people.’ And I was like, yeah yeah yeah, no, it doesn’t matter. We’re still gonna make it" "And she was like, oh, he is lost the plot. And all my friends were saying that to me like, what are you doing? And I was turning down. This wasn’t like I was getting offered much, but you know, couple of projects, not very good ones, I turned them down. And kept on going" "And lo and behold, look at that it did eventually come back. So that felt like a great victory" "Don’t doubt. You got instincts. You know, always listen, always be aware of the style that the director’s looking for, but understand you always gonna bring something unique from anybody else"

Sigourney Weaver says Yale drama school told her she had no talent and would never get anywhere so she became fearless at auditions "they quickly said um you have no talent and you’re never going to get anywhere. So, um, it took me years to get get over that. I think I finally have, but, um, it’s taken a long time" "I was basically a character actor, and I wanted to be a character actor. They saw me as this leading lady, but I was so unleading ladylike. You know, I wore old torn clothes from California. And, you know, they were they always gave me such a hard time about everything" "actually I think being told that you have no talent and you won’t get anywhere is a great advantage because I had friends from Yale who came expecting to be the second coming. I came not expecting to get any work and every time I went to an audition, I thought, well, I’m not going to get it. And uh so I’m just going to do what I want. And so I was incredibly fearless" "and I think that that helped me get work, ironically, because I had no illusions"

the highest-grossing movie in US history is now a Spider-Man sequel. Brand New Day is at about $952 million domestic, past The Force Awakens. Superhero fatigue was never real. audiences got tired of bad superhero movies, and the box office kept saying so.

Martin Scorsese says the first shot he came up with for Taxi Driver was tracking the camera away during Travis’s painful phone call so the audience wouldn’t have to witness it "I felt that when he made that phone call, it was so painful where you shouldn’t witness it. So the camera should track away, but not pan away. It should move completely to a hallway" "And in the hallway you think somebody’s coming, but nobody’s gonna come. Nothing’s gonna happen, we’re all alone. But we don’t wanna experience the depth of his pain at that point" "That was the first shot I came up with, I said, ‘That’s the style.’" "Every shot, as much as possible, was designed to be slightly disconcerting, but ultimately, ultimately satisfying. That was the philosophy of the shooting"

Crash over Brokeback Mountain is the worst Best Picture call of this century, and Oscar voters have admitted it. When The Hollywood Reporter had hundreds of Academy members re-vote in 2015, Brokeback won. the safe pick looked worse every year after.

Meryl Streep says music is the slow gate from the soul and nothing an actor prepares can match how direct it is "everyone can sing and in the class we would have all these boys who would say I’m not going to I’m not going to I’m not going to do that I’m not going to get up I don’t have to do that and she said yes you will you will learn to sing and you will sing in front of us and you’ll make everybody cry" "by the end of the of the class she got that out of them because there’s something about music that’s just it’s just the slow gate you know from the soul and it’s just undiluted if you can access it" "music does a thing that um no preparation that an actor can imagine can do it’s just so so direct" "that’s a perfect setup for the first clip I want to play from into the woods"

Danny DeVito says he gave Quentin Tarantino final cut on Pulp Fiction with a handshake, then kept his word after people walked out of a test screening "Final Cut is like gold." "It's not going to be on paper." "20 people walked out of the movie." "Nobody ever changed a thing." Plenty of producers would have started trimming the second people headed for the exits. DeVito held the power, let a young filmmaker with one movie behind him keep his cut, and that version became Pulp Fiction. A promise made with no contract is the kind that tells you who someone is. ft: @allthesmokeprod ALL THE SMOKE on youtube

Paul Thomas Anderson says he chased Alan Parker out of a screening and threw a VHS of his short film into the back of his car "I entered it into a competition for young filmmakers, for high school filmmakers. And it was very exciting because in part of it was that Alan Parker was going to see and judge your film" "I got there and Alan Parker was on his way out and he had already he didn’t have enough time or anything and he wasn’t going to see my film. I was heartbroken. So, I chased after him with my VHS of the movie" "he had a white convertible rabbit, Volkswagen rabbit, and I said, ‘Mr. Parker, you haven’t seen my film. You’re leaving without seeing my film.’ chucked it in the back seat, hit the bullseye" "Years later, he had a son who I met, and then I met Alan Parker, and he said, 'I fucking loved that video. I watched it a thousand times. My son watched it. We would watch it all the time'"

Sigourney Weaver says she is an English major nerd who always has notes for the director and you can’t leave the room without hearing what she thinks "I am actually really an English major nerd. And when I meet a director and I’ve read the script, if I like it, I’m obviously I’m going to meet the director. I often have a lot to suggest to him to make it stronger. You can’t get out of the room without hearing what I think" "especially in terms of structure and character. You can’t get out of the room without hearing what I think" "I think actually I’ve been hired a little bit for that because they know that you’re going to take care of that area, that character. There aren’t going to be inconsistencies, that I’m going to fix all of I’m going to at least point it out. And I love that responsibility" "The more you can strengthen the structure of the script so that it’s almost just unbeatable, the better chance you have of making a good movie"

Hugh Jackman says he signed on for Deadpool & Wolverine after his agent told him to take a beat and he finally asked himself what he wanted "you've already said no, put it out of your head" "the question came up, what do you want?" "I want to play Wolverine and I want to do Deadpool Wolverine" "I stopped to pee somewhere and I got out of the car and I rang Ryan" Ryan Reynolds had a Deadpool 3 pitch for Kevin Feige in three hours that Jackman wasn't in. the comeback came out of a phone call from the side of the road, not a strategy meeting, which is how every comeback should start ft: @sternshow The Howard Stern Show on youtube

Danny DeVito says a monkey leaped at his balls and bit him during the Batman Returns sewer scene "the monkey comes down, stops on the third step, looks at me, leaps right at my balls, and took a bite. I’m talking about that monkey. I saw his teeth like this" "it took him like five minutes to get him off my balls" "they take off my costume and there is a chunk of foam and stuff just ripped right out of my inner thigh" "he didn’t get the package. So, but he got it. Show must go on"

Jamie Lee Curtis says Gene Siskel once told her the worst thing she could do was figure out what made her interesting "I remember he was looking at me and he was saying, ‘Yeah, I don’t know what it is about you, but you’ve got something there’s something interesting about you’" "I looked at him and was like, ‘Really? Wow. Well, what is it? Tell me. I would love to know what it is that you’re seeing so that I can then take that and build on it’" "He said, ‘No, never know what it is. The minute you find out what it is, you’re going to try to commodify it. You’re going to try to encapsulate it, you’re going to try to turn it into a brand, you’re going to try to do something with it, and it’s going to fuck you up. It’s going to ruin what it is you’ve got going’" "That was the greatest gift he could have ever given me because I have just from then on gone, okay, whatever. I don’t really know what I do"

Bill Murray says his first improv class went so badly that he walked out and kept walking for about 60 blocks, probably in the wrong direction "I tried an improv class. I was so bad." "That's how disturbing it was to think you're good and not be good." "So I was purple for about a week" "But it lights a fire in you." Years later the same improv teacher spotted him under the clock at Marshall Field's and offered him a scholarship if he'd paint her kitchen. He took the job, ended up purple for a week, and says that's what lit the fire. Finding out you're not as good as you thought makes most people quit. He walked away once and came back. ft: @newheightshow New Heights on youtube