Jason Bateman

Will Arnett is one of the funniest guys I know. He has seen it all and done it all and come out the other end pretty savvy and pretty strong.

I'm never happier than in the bed.

The directing is something that is incredibly satisfying to me and challenging to me because it's asking me to draw on everything I've been able to absorb over all these years of acting and having all this set experience.

I really appreciate comedy a lot.

If it's a good part in a good movie, I'll do it.

I've been fortunate, but I'm also not very precious about making sure I'm the star of a film.

Things are going better now than ever, but in 24 months? I could be hearing crickets.

I don't really find a problem with technology or television or anything. I'm a product of it. I grew up watching TV, and I don't think I'm too dumb or too crazy.

I think NBC got a little reluctant to get behind single-camera shows after 'Scrubs' didn't do what they thought it was going to do following 'Friends.'

I owe everything to 'Arrested Development.' It just shows that everybody is kind of a job away from having relevance again.

People have often asked if I'm gay because I don't go out of my way to spit and scratch and give people attitude.

In most professions, if you stay at the office an extra four hours every day, you're gonna impress the boss. You're gonna get that promotion; you're gonna get that raise. You're gonna at least have job security. But with acting, if you're really ambitious and you have a good work ethic and are really good at your job, it might not really matter.

I wanted to marry somebody who wasn't someone I had to be in any particular mood to want to be around - with close friends, you can be with them no matter what mood you're in.

If you're stumbling out of a bar, and people tweet about it, well, don't be dumb. If you're going to get falling-down drunk, stay at home - which I did a lot of.

I only wanted to get married once, so when I felt I was ready to handle it, I looked at my relationships and noticed that boyfriends get tired of girlfriends, and vice versa, but you never get tired of your friends.

I haven't met a lot of 'Hogan Family' fans.

It's not about the script: it's about who the director is and who the other people in the cast are. Because you can look at a great script and execute it in a very sophomoric way, and you can look at an OK script, and you can execute it in a very sophisticated way and come out with something really good.

I looked around at the relationships that were the longest in my life, and they were the ones I had with my friends. I thought, 'If I only wanted to get married once, I should probably marry a friend.'

I try to figure out how much of the character I can find in myself because you don't want to get outside of your skill-set.

I don't want to be obnoxious with my ambition or sound like I expect any sort of entitlement here. Hollywood is not in the business of humoring people.

I have to warn you: I bet horses like a girl.

Marathons are good training goals.

The comedy community is very friendly right now. I think that's why you see all the synergy and people doing each other's movies.

It's not new: In the '70s, Archie Bunker said terrible things on 'All in the Family,' but it was all in Carroll O'Connor's performance. You saw lack of intelligence, and you laughed.

My father was a freelance writer/director/producer, and my mother was a stewardess for Pan-Am. It was very non-traditional.

I like to give my daughter some rope and let her make her own decisions.

Guys like Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Sacha Baron Cohen, they do things you love to watch. I like to do the other half.

My mother is British; she's from Shrewsbury. She turned me onto 'Monty Python' very early.

Do you want to continue being great at being in your twenties, or do you want to step up and graduate into adulthood?

I was just a lot smarter about not getting caught. I mean, I never stuck anything in my arm, but I certainly enjoyed my youth.

If you laugh, we just do another take. Laughter is too rare nowadays. If you can bust a gut, let it go, and we'll just go back to one.

I think it's always a good time to be in a political film in America because there's so much material for comedy.

Our job as actors is to just try to be as accurate and as mindful of what the audience is going through and receiving and processing.

My father was a director and producer, so when I was a little kid, he would take me to movies and show me what's good and what's not good and why, and often that would take me to a conversation about directing.

I try to see everything I do. It's a good learning tool for me. You kind of remember what you were going for when you were shooting it, and then see how it comes across in the context of what comes before and after it.

My upbringing as a child was very atypical.

Not many get a chance to hit the career re-set button.

I look at whatever the finish line is for the character and then kind of act backwards from that and play him in such a way so that that finish line is more rewarding.

There are worse things than being constantly hired to do anything.

I'm not a big, huge star, and so when people see me, it's usually to talk about something I've done, and that's a great conversation to have. That's what we're doing it for.

Jennifer Aniston and I have always just really gotten along well... I was just fortunate to be a good fit for parts in her films.

I was very surprised to get a reading for 'Arrested Development' because it really seemed to be the opposite of that which I was known for doing.

You hit those valleys sometimes and it's really frustrating. It's like getting stuck in traffic on the freeway. But there's not much you can do about it.

I was never at a place where rehab would have been appropriate.

A straight factor is important in any comedy, because you need something to tee it up and also to ground it.

If I'm enjoying something, I'd like to be able to just have it all. Frankly, that's the way I'm approaching my career now. I'm a total workaholic.

That's kind of the fun part about acting. We do get the right to kind of get from A to Z any way we want, as long as we start at A and end at Z.

I really enjoy playing that everyman part because that part is us, the audience. And you need somebody inside a comedy to tether the absurdity to reality.

Television is much more of a producer's writer's medium, so a lot of the time, when you're directing a television show, they have a color palette on set or a visual style and dynamic that's already been predetermined, and you just kind of have to follow the rules.

I'm looking forward to playing Michael Bluth many, many more times.

I'm not that great of an actor, so I can't, like, completely become somebody else.

As disciplined as I am, I'm also a huge hedonist.

I'm not talented enough to drop everything and become somebody different.

I wanted to be Dustin Hoffman or Robert De Niro or Al Pacino. I thought I was going to be a dramatic actor, but comedy sort of started out first, and I was like, 'Maybe I'll find some more drama later on in my career.'

I was doing everything that a kid would be doing anyway, but on top of that, I was able to fly to different cities.

To have the privileged position of being the guy who is responsible for shaping the entire experience for an audience as opposed to being just one instrument in that orchestra, being an actor, it's all-encompassing.

I wasn't really interested in doing anything except going from pilot season to pilot season and sowing my oats in the months between and telling my agency to stop sending me movie scripts, because they'd pile up in my house and make me feel guilty because I had to read them.

Acting is just playing the violin in an orchestra. Directing is being the conductor.

I'm a pretty normal guy. I'm really good at knowing how a normal guy would react in situations.

If people are going to complain about stereotyping, it's as likely to be Italian-Americans as gay people.

I can't assume that my kid is going to make the best decision all the time.

The people at Netflix are extremely intelligent about the way they monitor activity on their platform.

Throughout my 20s I spent a lot of time just playing and not really working, but fortunately for me I continued to get just enough work, and have a reason to wake up in the morning. I really empathize with some of my peers who had success in the early years then it dries up, and so there's no reason to get up in the morning.

I'd much rather have the freedom, and the obligation to use it responsibly, than be put in a box.

People say: 'Why do you want to play the straight man?' Well, it's because he gets to be in every scene.

It was like 'Risky Business' for 10 years. My parents were out of town, they left me a bunch of money, the car, and the house, and I didn't know when they were coming home.

I just think technology is pretty amazing. Like all things that are great, you have to be responsible about how much you use it.

I never looked at fan mail, for some reason. My mother and grandmother handled my mail - although it's not like I was ever in the stratosphere of Kirk Cameron or Scott Baio.

You can say your lines a million different ways and play your character a million different ways and still hit the common, agreed-upon finish line.

Actors are sellers, and I figured out a long time ago that if you wanted to work a lot, you had to be on the buying side.

I really empathise with some of my peers who had success in the early years; then it dries up, and so there's no reason to get up in the morning.

I have a tendency to evolve into William Shatner, with my big fat face.

If you make a mistake, people are going to know about it really fast - and I was making a ton of them when I was a kid.

It was a blast. I was doing everything that teenagers do and everything people in their twenties do. I was playing as hard as I was working, which was an effort to really balance my life.

There's a bunch of different flavours of funny. It's all about the execution of it.

Obviously, I did a couple of things right on the old casting couch.

If the goal is to be believable when you're acting, I've got the best idea of what that believability might look and feel like. And because you need a normal guy in a comedy so that the eccentricities can pop, that's a good part for me.

It's very difficult to pretend you're throwing a car.

I enjoy editing when I'm directing, but when someone else is directing, that's their film to cut.

Acting in something that I'm directing... I'm really enjoying it because, if for no other reason, that particular acting is like reading my mind on every single take. It's kind of efficient, for better or worse.

I think anybody who's doing work in their teen years on TV or in the movies, you're a teen idol by default.

I'm just going to try to stay employed. That's the tough part in this business.

I guess there's nothing funny about a guy who looks conservative and has it all together, but it's satisfying to see a conservative guy crumbling inside, and I think a lot of American comedy has cottoned on to that.

I think you get the parts that people are comfortable with seeing you play.

We had this neighbor who was an actor, and he was going to an audition one day, driving by our house, and he asked if I wanted to tag along. He was reading for the part of the father, and they were reading for the part of the son the same day, and he told me to sneak in there and make it look like I knew what I was doing.

Ideally, that's what you've got in an acting career is an equal number of dramas and comedies and an equal number of small films and big films.

I didn't really watch 'Beavis & Butt-head' that much or 'King of the Hill,' but I was a huge 'Office Space' fan.

I love a massage. I'd go every day if I could. I don't need to be wrapped in herbs like a salmon fillet, but I do love a massage.

And I've always loved commercials. I like working out how to organically weave a brand's message into the writing process. It's like an improv show, where comics ask the audience to throw out a word and a skit is built around it.

You do certain things in your twenties that are just not appropriate in your thirties and certainly not appropriate in your forties. Eventually you even the scales, and it's time to move on and become an adult and start working hard again and going to sleep a little bit earlier. Fortunately, I got a job to facilitate that transition.

I just love doing sitcoms. I'd be in them till I was gray if they'd have me.

That straight man character is a short trip between comedy and drama in a project, so I can play the comedic beat on the same page as a dramatic beat. It gives me a lot of freedom as an actor to play scenes in multiple ways because I don't play the clown, nor do I play someone who is particularly maudlin.

My family is pretty funny. My mother is British, so she's got a very dry sense of humor. That's where I got that from.

It earns you a lot of snark if you're able to convey vulnerability.

My father was a writer/director/producer, so instead of throwing a ball around, our bonding was going to see movies. And at an early age, I knew if I wanted to impress my dad, it was not going to be by throwing a ball real far.

I don't feel sorry for people in the public eye getting eyed by the public.

People still come up to me and say, 'Hey, 'Teen Wolf!' 'Teen Wolf Too' closed a week after it opened. Where did they see it?

I don't have anything to fix! I don't smoke, I don't drink, and I don't eat carbs. My life is just great now. Normal. Vanilla.

Tony Hale is a devout Christian and is a complete retard when it comes to swearing. The script called for him to swear for about 30 seconds and he just couldn't do it.

Pre-production and post-production is something that I've never been exposed to. I was pleasantly surprised that you could accomplish a lot during pre-production.