Top 35 Matthew Lillard Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I was like, what the hell is my life coming to? I’m a trained actor! I’ve done Shakespeare and here I am having farting contests with an imaginary dog!”

— Matthew Lillard

2. “As a kid, as a young actor, I really wanted to pop. I wanted to create something different. I wanted to be Sean Penn, but I didn’t have all the words to be Sean Penn. But I was trying to do something different in every role.”

— Matthew Lillard

3. “It’s always fun to play a bad guy because you get more to do. It’s more arch. There’s more energy to throw into it.”

— Matthew Lillard

4. “Charlie Brown’s good. I always had a little crush on that Lucy. I thought she was kind of a hot little brunette.”

— Matthew Lillard

5. “I’m almost 40, so it’s an awkward time in my career. You kind of hope it comes through and, if not, I’ll be a waiter. Awesome.”

— Matthew Lillard

6. “Something like ‘Without a Paddle’ does really well at the box office and I’m like, ‘Oh, here we go.’ In ‘Without a Paddle’ I’m the romantic lead – great! A comedy and that’s what America wants. Then it did nothing for me and I went into kind-of a work abyss. I just didn’t get another shot.”

— Matthew Lillard

7. “The more lines I have, in general, the worse a movie is. It’s very rare that I get say great things in fantastic movies. So if you see me as like, number one on a call sheet? In general, that movie is pretty bad.”

— Matthew Lillard

8. “The older I get, the more I can’t stand violence and have a hard time with seeing people die in horrific ways. It gets harder and harder to watch and deal with that stuff.”

— Matthew Lillard

9. “You can inspire people to give you greatness, or you can micro-manage them into your own one specific kernel of an idea. To me, I think that when you inspire people to give their best, then you’re going to get the best result.”

— Matthew Lillard

10. “I’ve always been a guy that doesn’t do well waiting for people to say, “You can act.” It’s always been a part of me.”

— Matthew Lillard

11. “When you go from movie to movie, it’s like going from family to family. You work with people for really intense hours on really long days and a bond happens. So even when a movie is terrible, you love it.”

— Matthew Lillard

12. “My tone and my style are reflected in the movies I choose to make. I want to make big movies. My dream is to be Jon Favreau or Ben Affleck.”

— Matthew Lillard

13. “I’ve really enjoyed the independent film world. I’ve had a blast. But, the reality is that I really want to make bigger movies. If I could make movies that carry great characters and great performances and great pathos, and can have an explosion or two, that would be fine with me.”

— Matthew Lillard

14. “The stage is a training ground and it’s where you learn what’s funny and what’s successful.”

— Matthew Lillard

15. “Being onstage is like being rock star. Whereas if you’re doing a movie, it’s such a confined space. You know, you do a comedy, it’s so hard, too, ’cause with a comedy, there’s no vocal reaction, there’s no energy that you get back that spurs you on to be funnier because everyone has to be quiet.”

— Matthew Lillard

16. “I learned a lot, in terms of inspiring people. It became very clear to me, very early on, that directing a movie was a lot like being in a theater company.”

— Matthew Lillard

17. “To me, the punk rock kids I grew up with were really, really smart, and to me, respecting those kids was a really big deal.”

— Matthew Lillard

18. “I fired a bunch of people and kind of went back to my roots. I fired my agent – I had this big, fancy agent and a big fancy manager and a big fancy lawyer – and I went back to my first agent and said, “I want to go back to just being an actor.””

— Matthew Lillard

19. “Being an actor, when you sign onto a project – whether it’s good, bad, or indifferent – you kind of fall in love with it. You fall in love with the experience, you fall in love with the memories.”

— Matthew Lillard

20. “When I was in high school, I was the guy directing plays after class. I started my first theater company at 19, and my second theater company at 21. I’ve always been a guy who doesn’t do well with the passive nature of being an actor.”

— Matthew Lillard

21. “A lot of times, as a clown, you find acting for a reason. It’s a way to exercise yourself. If you’re funny, you test yourself.”

— Matthew Lillard

22. “Character actors are becoming a thing of the past. They’re just going by the wayside. They’re just cutting through that caliber of acting.”

— Matthew Lillard

23. “I like the fact that a modern television and modern drama on cable has characters that are really intricate and deep and have multiple layers.”

— Matthew Lillard

24. “I always think that I’m the best thing in a lot of bad movies. Personally, I have to. I think that I like me as an actor.”

— Matthew Lillard

25. “I’m not a broad comedy guy. I’ve been funny in movies, but I’m not a comedian. I’m an actor who’s sometimes funny.”

— Matthew Lillard

26. “If I could act in theater, my whole life, and never act in film or television again, and just direct the rest of my life, I would gladly do that.”

— Matthew Lillard

27. “Every kid’s dream is to be a great actor.”

— Matthew Lillard

28. “I got into a bad jag of movies that helped pay the rent and I thought would help further me along.”

— Matthew Lillard

29. “For better or worse, I take my acting seriously. I may not have been in the best movies ever made, but I take it deathly serious, and I love being an actor.”

— Matthew Lillard

30. “The great thing about acting is the longer you do it, the more you realize that all those realities are inside you. No matter how crazy they are, you can pretend that they are a part of you. The great thing about this job is you get to play with every aspect of your id and who you are.”

— Matthew Lillard

31. “When you’re making an independent film what you don’t have in time and money you have to make up with creativity and diligence.”

— Matthew Lillard

32. “Nothing would make my kids happier than to do another movie.”

— Matthew Lillard

33. “I think everyone is given drama, by virtue of the fact that we all have drama in our lives, but not everyone can make people laugh.”

— Matthew Lillard

34. “There’s not a comedy actor who doesn’t want a chance to do drama, and vice versa. As actors, we’re always looking to be pushed and to do the other side of the coin.”

— Matthew Lillard

35. “Now, more then ever, we have the ability to make films for almost nothing and that’s broken down all barriers of entry. I think it’s a new golden age of film-making. With that, there needs to be the ability to recoup investment dollars, people need to make money.”

— Matthew Lillard

36. “I like doing family films.”

— Matthew Lillard

37. “So much of Hollywood is about who the people you work with are.”

— Matthew Lillard