“I don’t have a favorite fruit. There are things that thrill me each turn of the season.”
― Bill Pullman
“I’m a very discriminating shoe shopper. I only look for something special. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever bought two pairs at the same time.”
― Bill Pullman
“The first Westerns I saw as a child were those little 8-mm. home movies put out by Castle Films.”
― Bill Pullman
“I did ‘Malice,’ ‘Sommersby,’ and ‘Sleepless in Seattle,’ and they’re as disparate characters as I’ve ever played. But somehow, there was that thing – they were all second male leads, so they all didn’t get the girl in some weird way.”
― Bill Pullman
“It’s hard to explain to people how, if you’re really capable of providing the right professional work environment, it allows you to get more personal.”
― Bill Pullman
“We’re all part of humanity. And maybe there’s something about the worst people, with the most destructive, warped minds, that is just an acceleration of something that is in quite a few of us.”
― Bill Pullman
“Sometimes you fall into the niche of being the confidant guy, or the good-looking guy, or being too charactery, or not charactery enough.”
― Bill Pullman
“Fox was interested in a different title to ‘Independence Day.’”
― Bill Pullman
“I’ve always liked authors such as Philip K. Dick and Ray Bradbury.”
― Bill Pullman
“I think Westerns are always so great for clearing out the clutter and the ambiguities, and getting right to the broad strokes of that kind of situation.”
― Bill Pullman
“I like those crisis moments – if you’re on top of it and don’t get pulled under by panic and fear, it’s a very bonding thing.”
― Bill Pullman
“It’s astounding how challenging plays are… The scary part is that you get to encounter humanity in a way you don’t in films. The audience amplifies the experience.”
― Bill Pullman
“There’s something that comes into you that’s so exciting when you’re directing.”
― Bill Pullman
“Stacy Keach was really fun to work with, and Henry Winkler was very fun.”
― Bill Pullman
“With While You Were Sleeping, it was so much fun and such a Cinderella story, that I didn’t want to do another romantic comedy. I wanted to do the opposite.”
― Bill Pullman
“Rural towns aren’t always idyllic. It’s easy to feel trapped and be aware of social hypocrisy.”
― Bill Pullman
“There was an idea of accepting everyone; there was no sense of exclusion.”
― Bill Pullman
“I was brought up in a very small town in upstate New York.”
― Bill Pullman
“Truthfully, I almost avoided ‘While You Were Sleeping,’ because I find those romantic comedies kind of precious, and they’re full of lines that leave you feeling a little bewildered when you say them.”
― Bill Pullman
“I do take lots of time off between projects, but when the right thing comes along, I don’t like to turn it down, I’ve been doing this for a decade, and I remember what it was like when I started. You spend maybe five percent of your time actually doing it, and the rest of the time, you’re trying to get that five percent.”
― Bill Pullman
“Theater has always been most important to my psyche.”
― Bill Pullman
“I also turn down what’s probably a good amount of coinage to be made out of playing dads, an incredible number of obnoxious dad.”
― Bill Pullman
“There’s a point you get to on the stage where you’re not remembering lines but living them, and you reach this pure moment which, really, is more intense than what you can achieve in life.”
― Bill Pullman
“There’s definitely a pattern of great British shows that get reinvented in America and do really well here, but I think ‘Torchwood’ is a bit different. It’s more of a hybrid that doesn’t exist as a reinvention.”
― Bill Pullman
“I co-own the ranch with my brother, and he and his wife are really the backbone of the operation.”
― Bill Pullman
“I was 21, and rehearsing a play, took a fall and was in a coma for a few days. And when I recovered, I’d lost my sense of smell completely.”
― Bill Pullman
“Well, I can do certain jobs because smells don’t bother me. But that means I’m usually the one at the ranch cleaning up all the manure.”
― Bill Pullman
“I wake up as soon as it gets light.”
― Bill Pullman
“I love to prune. I have a physical need to do things.”
― Bill Pullman
“I’m not the first one to say it, but that time onstage is a heightened sense of present tense.”
― Bill Pullman
“Globalisation is happening so fast it’s confusing for people, and tolerance is threatened.”
― Bill Pullman
“We’ve seen with Brexit and other things that there’s a dark impulse to be petulant and frustrated with complicated solutions.”
― Bill Pullman
“The chaos of my life has a lot to do with my hair.”
― Bill Pullman
“I enjoy that with theater, you can just go into a room with a paper bag lunch: there’re no cables, no electricity. It’s the purest experience.”
― Bill Pullman
“I always loved asking everybody when I arrived in England, from the drivers who picked me up to the people at the hotel to people I met when I was walking in the park, almost everyone at some point would say, ‘Everyone loves Ant & Dec!’ From eight to 80.”
― Bill Pullman
“I always feel like there are a lot of different types of favourites. There are some that I look to for interesting things, some that I look to for acting things, others that I watch again and again.”
― Bill Pullman
“’Zabriskie Point’ was a time when I was in a lot of change and flux, and these incredible visuals hit me like they had rearranged the organs in my body. The ending and the free-floating debris and everything is an image that burned itself in my consciousness.”
― Bill Pullman
“As an actor, you’re continually riding the waves of whether you’re in or out, getting work or not getting work, and Kazan was really a guy who was condemned into not working and looking to go deep into someplace and just live inside his art.”
― Bill Pullman
“I want to be scary, boring, philosophical, funny, touching.”
― Bill Pullman
“I’ve always been what they call a late bloomer.”
― Bill Pullman
“I was the kid who would join a sports team and be the biggest liability at first and a star player by the time the game got going. I just move very slowly.”
― Bill Pullman
“Growing things and being able to live off the land has always appealed to me.”
― Bill Pullman
“This whole climate change and what it’s doing to our environment is frightening to people.”
― Bill Pullman
“There’s something about Warren Wilson. You can gain a lot of very important things and skills that you carry over into whatever you decide to do.”
― Bill Pullman
“I’ve never really been a television watcher and watched comedies, and I have gotten a number of invitations to be on television as the dad.”
― Bill Pullman
“My family and I are hooked on ‘The Searchers.’ I can’t get enough of it.”
― Bill Pullman
“If you are in an Edward Albee play, you say Edward Albee is the greatest playwright of all time… If you’re in an Israel Horovitz play, you say Israel Horovitz is the greatest playwright of all time.”
― Bill Pullman
“I think, when I’m 73, I’m going to be getting softer, writing Hallmark cards, losing my teeth.”
― Bill Pullman
“Othello is someone who’s just had a victory, and it’s the aftermath of coming back and attempting to live comfortably as a civilian.”
― Bill Pullman
“I never imagined myself in films. My benchmarks were performances I saw in the theater.”
― Bill Pullman
“If I were born in the 1700s, I would look like a rounded man.”
― Bill Pullman
“I think I was born out of my time.”
― Bill Pullman
“I don’t like this instinct of reality television to wear your lifestyle in public. I’ve really always loved the anonymity of things.”
― Bill Pullman
“I always come back to acting.”
― Bill Pullman
“I hate to admit it, because it makes me sound weird, but I’m Mr. Shoes. I own over 30 pairs.”
― Bill Pullman
“Some of the shoes I have are from movies – I have my workman’s boots from ‘While You Were Sleeping’ – while others are shoes I’ve had forever.”
― Bill Pullman
“I like to wear my dad’s shoes to auditions as sort of a lucky thing. I feel like I’m on solid ground.”
― Bill Pullman
“’The Virginian’ has a very important romantic story line that you don’t find in a lot of Westerns… At the heart of the story is quite a bit of pain and a sense of loss.”
― Bill Pullman
“The idea of taking classic American stories and reinterpreting them for a time and place is not just commercially viable. These stories also carry a sensual nature of what it meant to be an American, and they deserve to be reinterpreted.”
― Bill Pullman
“I’m intrigued by a tough situation, and I try to do something with it.”
― Bill Pullman
“There’s always a certain kind of homework you have to do when there’s an accent involved.”
― Bill Pullman
“I’ve done a lot of different kinds of things, so different people remember me for different things.”
― Bill Pullman
“American audiences and European and Asian audiences are so different.”
― Bill Pullman
“I always love challenges and doing something that I can’t quite figure out.”
― Bill Pullman
“I watched John Wayne movies, matinees – things like that. It was only in college that I saw European films. That became more of what I was interested in.”
― Bill Pullman
“I never had any idea of going into movies.”
― Bill Pullman
“I’m fascinated by movies and enjoy that, of course, but always, the measure of how you are functioning in the arts was theater.”
― Bill Pullman
“I was doing this children’s theater play, and it was non-Equity. We were out of town to do it at the Kennedy Center, and it was always kind of, ‘Well, the producers may have to turn this into Equity,’ and that’s what happened. It was kind of a silly children’s theater play, but that’s how I got my card.”
― Bill Pullman
“I did this play, ‘Expedition 6,’ that I worked on for three years in between other things. It was a good, interesting time for me because I trained as a theater director, and I went back, and we toured it around.”
― Bill Pullman
“Sometimes when you really try to be earnest, everything disappears. If you really try to make a romantic movie, the first thing that goes out the window is the romance or real passion. It suddenly becomes cute-ville or cozy-ville. It’s another world other than life.”
― Bill Pullman
“I think you do independent movies because you’re looking to cut away from commercial movies.”
― Bill Pullman
“Commercial movies have to end with moral flags flown again and all that.”
― Bill Pullman
“I have never forgotten John Candy’s generosity. He showed me how to be a gentle leader.”
― Bill Pullman
“A lot of people just ask me about how I can do small budgets and big budgets, but many actors do both. I think the more self-destructive impulse I have is doing so many different characters.”
― Bill Pullman
“I’ve always wrestled against being typified in one way or another.”
― Bill Pullman
“Television tends to be a more difficult medium for me to get my head around sometimes when it comes to certain things I get offered.”
― Bill Pullman
“I’d have to say that it kills me that there’s a concern that ‘Torchwood’ has gone to America to become Americanised.”
― Bill Pullman
“No one wants to say, ‘That’s not funny,’ when you’re working.”
― Bill Pullman
“I always feel like there’s some behaviour that we’re all capable – we have our inhibitions protecting from indulging in certain appetites or developing certain appetites.”
― Bill Pullman
“You’re always carrying something that’s interfering. It’s like static noise that doesn’t have to be there, and you have to school yourself to clean that out.”
― Bill Pullman
“I’ve been lucky to have opportunities with David Lynch in ‘Lost Highway’ and Jennifer Lynch in this movie ‘Surveillance,’ so I’ve always boomeranged around a little bit, and no one has caught my foot in the trap yet, but I think if I move fast enough… ‘cos I think I got trapped a couple of times.”
― Bill Pullman
“I’ve never really been a television watcher, so I never watch comedies.”
― Bill Pullman
“I have gotten a number of invitations to be on television shows as ‘the dad,’ but that was Kryptonite to me. I was like, ‘This would be the death of me. I’ll be a cesspool of niceness.’ It doesn’t feed me.”
― Bill Pullman
“I think about Laura Bush every once in awhile. She is a great supporter of the arts. I did a show at the Eisenhower Theater, and she would make a point of coming backstage. The relationship between Laura and George Bush was always that way where you felt like he was at his best behavior when he was in her company.”
― Bill Pullman
“I love that vein which uses sci-fi to address society’s problems. It is the same when you have useful nightmares – things morph, and you get to confront issues in your dreams.”
― Bill Pullman
“I noticed that in ‘The Revenant,’ as much as it is a good story of revenge and endurance, there are times that you get to escape with a story like that.”
― Bill Pullman
“I’ve been lucky to be a part of many blockbuster movies… in which it’s hard to get to that level of being memorable, but I still have fond memories of ‘Independence Day,’ to be sure. There are also many small ones I’ve had that give me many fond memories.”
― Bill Pullman
“I’ve always been a fan of George C. Scott, who was working in movies when I was in college… films like ‘Patton’ and ‘Hospital.’ I was really impressed by him, and I had seen him onstage as well in ‘Uncle Vanya.’ He was a champ to me.”
― Bill Pullman
“I really enjoyed doing Albee’s ‘The Goat.’ It’s a powerful piece and a really exciting play to do.”
― Bill Pullman
“I did a lot of Shakespeare touring when I was in college in Montana.”
― Bill Pullman
“I’m often confused with other actors. But the people who know my work don’t have that problem.”
― Bill Pullman
“’The Last Seduction,’ ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ and ‘While You Were Sleeping’ did a lot to get me noticed for bigger roles.”
― Bill Pullman
“I’ve seen a lot of actors in a lot of different stages of their careers, and I’ve seen it come and go. People get a sense of entitlement from it. And that’s when it starts getting you in trouble.”
― Bill Pullman
“I have a pretty good grip on who I am.”
― Bill Pullman
“I have always been impressed by the fruit community. There is a Tao of fruit, which is generous. You share what you know, and you give what you can.”
― Bill Pullman
“I planted an orchard when I was 13. The impulse came from wanting to grow my own apples. That and the nursery catalog showed an apple tree with a beautiful girl standing under the fruit. Whether the flavor or the picture that did it, I’ve been hooked since.”
― Bill Pullman
“I’m not a gardener. I don’t have the consistency for gardening, and I have barely enough for an orchard. I don’t embarrass myself. You have to be there tending and weeding. With orchards, you can go through negligent periods and recover.”
― Bill Pullman
“My interest in theater really began in the ’70s when American realism wasn’t really in favor. I really dreaded going into a play that had a toaster that worked. I just didn’t want to see that.”
― Bill Pullman
“I don’t watch TV. I’d probably be a better person if I did, but it makes me anxious.”
― Bill Pullman
“I don’t think I’m repeating anything I’ve done before, but sometimes I lose track.”
― Bill Pullman
“That’s how we invaded Iraq, through the fear of an ‘evil empire,’ and it just makes people feel like bulls with the toreadors – you see red, and you charge.”
― Bill Pullman
“With modern medicine prolonging life no matter what condition you’re in, it seems like we’re working towards immortality by science.”
― Bill Pullman
“The military is a discrete entity. Then they come back, and they’re such a small percentage of the population, and they can’t really – it’s hard for them to talk to civilians.”
― Bill Pullman
“I think institutions that are bureaucratic often try to squeeze from the top down, and they don’t have good results on the ground level.”
― Bill Pullman
“That massiveness of bureaucracy at the VA is chronic and has been chronic.”
― Bill Pullman
“It’s during wartime that innovations happen.”
― Bill Pullman
“I went to school in the 1970s, and there was a lot of physical theater in those days.”
― Bill Pullman
“There is something exciting when you see people who are very formal talking with each other, and there is a sense that they have chosen to be that way. There is something masked that is more interesting to me than just people who are intent on displaying their uniqueness or whatever.”
― Bill Pullman
“There is a bearing which comes from having a little bit of something withheld. In acting classes, they always say don’t reveal 100 percent: it’s much more interesting.”
― Bill Pullman
“It’s funny: When I first heard they were thinking of me for the president in ‘Independence Day,’ I just assumed it was a comedy – I didn’t exactly think of myself as leader-of-the-free-world material.”
― Bill Pullman
“Westerns give people a chance to see wide-open spaces and life before technology took over.”
― Bill Pullman
“It’s astounding to me that in a country where there is an ever-growing divide between rich and poor, that people won’t accept the need for regulation on banks and salaries and so on.”
― Bill Pullman
“I like to build houses.”
― Bill Pullman
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