Top 100 Bill Hader Quotes
#1. I work a lot, and it's kind of like, you meet people, and you just click. It's not like I'm looking at something and thinking: 'South Park' - how do I get on that?' I just became friends with those guys first. They're nice guys.
Bill Hader
#2. David Sedaris is so good that it makes me mad.
Bill Hader
#3. Top Ten lists make me insane. I just know they're going to change daily.
Bill Hader
#4. I really enjoyed playing Vinny Vedecci, the Italian talk show host. He was the first character I ever came up with where I gave him a name and a way of dressing.
Bill Hader
#5. Getting 'SNL' was pretty amazing, so just to be able to have an eight-year career there and be really happy with everything I did, it was pretty big.
Bill Hader
#6. I saw 'A Clockwork Orange' when I was 11. When you watch 'Clockwork Orange' at 11, it either totally scares you from watching movies, or you want to become a filmmaker. I was the latter.
Bill Hader
#7. When you're performing, you're playing to the back row. With acting, you have to be more nuanced.
Bill Hader
#8. I - at the table reads, I break constantly. If something is up there that I'm not expecting, I tend to - I can't help myself; I'll start laughing.
Bill Hader
#9. I collect movies. So I have all those in binders. I don't have the DVDs out. I put them in binders.
Bill Hader
#11. When 'MacGruber' came out, David Wain was one of the first people who publicly championed it.
Bill Hader
#12. Turns out typecasting is a real thing.
Bill Hader
#13. I think that's the thing I learned at 'Saturday Night Live' - any time I would try and strategize, I would always, always fall on my face. Things worked out when I tried to make it about what I was feeling at that moment and what I was into in that moment of my life.
Bill Hader
#14. I've seen people who come to work say, 'No, I'm doing it this way, and that's that.' I'm the opposite - I like being out of my element; it's where I like to live.
Bill Hader
#15. If a movie doesn't even have financing yet, they'll do a table read for it at a casting director's office with actors, for the producer and the writer, just to hear if the movie is working.
Bill Hader
#16. I can't do Twitter or Facebook, mostly because I feel like I'm the type of person who has to regiment the amount of time I spend doing certain things or I'll just wade in it, and then I'll never come out.
Bill Hader
#17. I set the time on my iPhone to be 30 minutes late, so I'm only an hour and a half late to appointments now.
Bill Hader
#18. I'm always up before everybody else. I also crash at 3 o'clock when everybody's at their prime.
Bill Hader
#19. It is funny that people always assume you have a bigger part in a movie than you actually do. I remember a lot of people thought 'Adventureland' starred me and Kristen Wiig. But we were like, 'No, we're only in the movie for like ten minutes!'
Bill Hader
#20. When you move to L.A. or New York, it's easy to get a little lost and forget your original goal.
Bill Hader
#22. Even though it doesn't look like it, I run. On a treadmill. And I bounce around to all the songs on my iPod - the Pixies, Wagner, Richard and Linda Thompson, even books on tape. Just not self-help ones.
Bill Hader
#23. It doesn't occur to me that I don't drive a cool car until I hang out with Jon Hamm, who picks me up in what looks like a Transformer, and I think, 'Oh, that's what movie stars are driving. I guess I'm not a movie star.'
Bill Hader
#24. Pete Davidson - he's in the movie 'Trainwreck.' He has a small part in it. I told Lorne Michaels about him, said he was really funny.
Bill Hader
#25. My life is different since I moved back to L.A. from New York, mostly because I have a family and I don't go out.
Bill Hader
#26. All the stories have to do with emotion. Emotion is driving everything.
Bill Hader
#27. I remember seeing 'Spinal Tap' at a young age and being like, 'That's how you perform comedy.'
Bill Hader
#28. I hated pitch meetings. Pitch meetings were my least favorite part of the week. I just gave up. I was so terrible at them.
Bill Hader
#29. I don't believe in the term 'guilty pleasure,' because it implies I should feel ashamed for liking something. A real guilty pleasure would be, I don't know, taking gratification in some stranger's ghastly death or something - which I guess I do enjoy, because I read a ton of true crime.
Bill Hader
#30. A lot of times I think people, when they're doing a movie that's a family movie, they're worried about this being too esoteric or too dark or too weird.
Bill Hader
#31. The first time I ever acted was in 'The Glass Menagerie' in high school, and my first line was, 'I didn't know Shakespeare had a sister.'
Bill Hader
#32. To be honest, I watch way more dramatic films when I'm chilling at home. I think when you work in comedy, you just want something different in your private life. Makes you feel balanced, I guess.
Bill Hader
#33. It's not like you get up on stage and you're immediately a genius. It takes a long time. So, don't be discouraged.
Bill Hader
#34. Comedy is incredibly hard. You have to be loose. You have to be not afraid to fail.
Bill Hader
#35. I move out here, and next thing I know I'm 25, and the only thing I've heard is, 'Can you get a coffee, can you hurry up with the thing, blah blah blah.' It was nice doing something and hearing someone go, 'Hey, you're good at this.'
Bill Hader
#36. As far as post-'SNL' career, whatever kind of comes my way that looks interesting, I'll do it, you know?
Bill Hader
#37. There are some really funny women at 'SNL,' man.
Bill Hader
#38. When people tell you what doesn't work, they're usually right. When they tell you how to fix it, they're usually wrong.
Bill Hader
#39. The first time I met James Franco, he was dressed like James Dean. He was James Dean, literally, filming a biopic.
Bill Hader
#40. I grew up with my two sisters and my mom, so it's my lot in life to be surrounded by women.
Bill Hader
#41. My first real job, I sold Christmas trees when I was twelve for extra money. I did that until I was fifteen. Then I bagged groceries, and I worked at the first Borders ever in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Bill Hader
#42. When I met Judd Apatow, he told me I should start writing screenplays. They'd be really bad at first, but the more I did it, the better I'd get.
Bill Hader
#43. Before you get to 'SNL,' you have your own sensibility. And when you get to 'SNL,' it's the show's sensibility.
Bill Hader
#44. To be honest, I don't know how comedy works.
Bill Hader
#45. I got invited to the Playboy Mansion with the Lonely Island guys after their first season on 'SNL,' and I sat in the corner drinking coffee and talking to Akiva Schaffer about what aspect ratio he was going to shoot 'Hot Rod' in. Like, that's what we talk about.
Bill Hader
#46. Seth Meyers and I wrote a 'Spider-Man' comic.
Bill Hader
#47. When it comes to comedy, it might be interesting to know why an airplane works, but really? Maybe it's better not to know why certain things work. Just fly the thing, and if nothing falls apart, you'll be fine.
Bill Hader
#48. 'Superbad' was such a personal movie.
Bill Hader
#49. One of the reasons I started working at 'South Park,' actually, was that I wanted to learn how to structure things and how to tell a story.
Bill Hader
#50. I always felt better co-writing something - always co-writing. Because if I was the lead of it and it failed, then it failed on my own accord. I would say, "Well, I liked it or I screwed up. I take the hit on this one."
Bill Hader
#52. I was in a sketch group in L.A., and we were playing, like, backyards in Glendale and stuff. It was pretty ugly because we didn't have any money.
Bill Hader
#53. I'm never going to say, 'Well, I'm never going to do comedy again.' I love comedies, and it's what people know me for, so I love doing it ... I don't really think about it in terms of 'Well, I should do this because it's comedy or drama.'
Bill Hader
#54. 'Vanity Fair' did this grid thing a couple years ago, connecting people who've worked together, and I had the most branches on it or whatever, because I'd worked with so-and-so and so-and-so worked with so-and-so, and I was kind of in the middle.
Bill Hader
#55. I'm the only one in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that has Final Draft on my computer. Then you show up and go to any coffee shop in L.A., and there are a hundred people your age with Final Draft.
Bill Hader
#56. My mom, dad, grandparents, we all do voices.
Bill Hader
#57. I was always self-conscious about the fact that I didn't have as much comedy experience as other people at 'SNL,' and I kept thinking they were going to realize they'd made a mistake by hiring me.
Bill Hader
#58. I took Second City out of desperation, and that's what ended up working out. It shows that you should be doing a lot of different stuff, taking whatever opportunities are there, to see what works.
Bill Hader
#59. There's a movie called 'Pod People' that has a weird little anteater alien. That was a good alien.
Bill Hader
#60. I like when you are telling a story and fall into an impression.
Bill Hader
#61. I remember I could do - I did Bart Simpson once on the bus. I did, like, a really good Bart Simpson voice on the bus, obviously before I hit puberty. And everybody went, 'Whoa, that sounds just like Bart Simpson.'
Bill Hader
#62. I like watching Kate McKinnon do something - there's a joy in seeing a new move from somebody and going, 'Oh, she can do that.'
Bill Hader
#63. My wife is the sweetest, most even-keeled person ever. A mood swing to her is like, 'Oh, I'm uncomfortable.'
Bill Hader
#64. You know what, I remember being on my T-ball team and telling people about 'Platoon.'
Bill Hader
#65. My wife and I were on our honeymoon in Turks and Caicos, in the middle of nowhere, and I'm sitting on this deserted beach, and I see one lone person walking along the shore. He walks right up to me and says, 'I love 'Laser Cats,' and then just walks away.
Bill Hader
#66. I kind of romanticized what it was like to be a writer and director when I was in my early twenties. Working as a production assistant knocked that right out of me.
Bill Hader
#67. I can't cook. I can barely make a bowl of cereal.
Bill Hader
#68. Going to any loud place is terrible for me. I'm bad at loud restaurants.
Bill Hader
#69. If you can't forgive yourself, you think you're never going to be able to forgive yourself, and you repeat the same behavior.
Bill Hader
#70. I was into writing and directing. I was a bit of a reluctant actor. I would always ask friends to shoot or direct their movies, but then they'd want me to be in them.
Bill Hader
#71. Let's face it: I look pretty out of shape.
Bill Hader
#72. In the U.S., it's like, you start with a great script, and then on set - not everybody, but definitely in the Apatow group - you go off, and you're improvising on camera. So while you're on camera, you're saying things that no one else has ever heard before during the actual take.
Bill Hader
#73. Oddly enough, I have really bad stage fright - getting up in front of people. And I made a living going on live television.
Bill Hader
#74. My dad was a big Frank Zappa fan, so I remember listening to a lot of Frank Zappa. Girls do not like Frank Zappa.
Bill Hader
#75. I have a lot of incomplete short films and incomplete scripts out there.
Bill Hader
#76. My parents were supportive. I didn't have good grades, but they could tell I wasn't lazy.
Bill Hader
#77. Every two months, I would get an email, 'Skeleton Twins update: still don't have the money!'
Bill Hader
#78. I moved out to L.A. to be a filmmaker or director. I didn't even think about doing comedy or even acting. I wanted to be like Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson, but I wasn't going to a lot of comedy.
Bill Hader
#79. I was never that good on stage with live improv. I was much better on film or writing something and then thinking about it. I was too in my head when I was on stage.
Bill Hader
#80. I was a production assistant in the post department on 'The Surreal Life.' And it's been reported before that I was an assistant editor on 'The Surreal Life.' That is not true.
Bill Hader
#81. The nature of 'SNL' is that it's so in-the-moment.
Bill Hader
#82. George Saunders is a complete genius.
Bill Hader
#83. The whole thing with animated movies is that it's very hard to get out of your head because it's very moving through each line systematically.
Bill Hader
#84. I love comedy, but it's dramas that stick with me.
Bill Hader
#85. I would say it wasn't until my fourth season on 'SNL' where people or my agent was saying, 'You're an actor.' I never thought of it that way.
Bill Hader
#86. Las Vegas, New Mexico has had a lot of great movies shot there.
Bill Hader
#87. I met Robin Williams a few times, and he was a beautiful guy.
Bill Hader
#88. Good directors give short and specific instructions to their actors.
Bill Hader
#89. 'SNL' is really hard to do when you're single and living alone. And then it's pretty tough when you're married, because you don't see your spouse.
Bill Hader
#90. If I get a chance to write a comic book or do a voice in an Adult Swim show, I do it. It's much more fulfilling to me and I get to work with people who I'm a fan of.
Bill Hader
#91. I was offered a lot of supporting crazy parts in comedies because that's all I had done.
Bill Hader
#92. For our anniversary, my wife and I went to see Godzilla, and then we ate at Barnyard Venice, and it was like, 'We are crazy! The Kardashians have to keep up with us!'
Bill Hader
#93. Yeah, improvising only really works 100% when you're with somebody.
Bill Hader
#94. I was at Second City L.A., going through the conservatory, and I graduated in 2004 and I got 'SNL' in 2005.
Bill Hader
#95. You learn quickly at 'SNL' you get in trouble if you compare yourself to other people, where they're at, or what other people had done before you.
Bill Hader
#96. At the beginning of each week at 'Saturday Night Live,' we have a full cast meeting where Lorne Michaels introduces the upcoming host.
Bill Hader
#97. I've been a big fan of David Wain's and was honored to get to be in one of his projects.
Bill Hader
#98. I would do 'Superbad,' and the next offers you would get would all be crazy cop characters or crazy security guards or something.
Bill Hader
#99. Richard Grieco once asked for a bunch of M&M's
Bill Hader
#100. In 'Winter's Bone,' it's literally the director and the camera operator. That's it. Just a super-small Kubrick crew. You know what I mean? Like, 8 people.
Bill Hader
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