I’m a private person, but I don’t feel afraid to walk out of my door or anything. I get recognised occasionally, but not overwhelmingly so. – Paul Dano
I used to write a lot of songs. I was an English major in college. I was a deluded poet for a year. Totally deluded. – Paul Dano
Listening to hard rock on the subway doesn’t work for me, especially modern hard rock. Driving in L.A. helped me to understand the appeal of that music. – Paul Dano
I remember going to the theatre when I was little and the lights going down and just getting really scared about what was going to happen up there. – Paul Dano
I really don’t want to go to work every day convincing myself of what I’m saying. I want the material to make me a better actor; then I try to return the favor to the material. – Paul Dano
I feel like I have to be responsible for what I’m participating in or putting out into the world. – Paul Dano
On ‘There Will Be Blood,’ I was cast at the last minute. I had 3 and a half to 4 days to get ready for the first day. I just went for it, threw myself in there and gave it everything I had. That was just guts and instinct, not a lot of preparation. – Paul Dano
Your director is your main support – actors don’t generally give each other advice on set, not in my experience. – Paul Dano
I think that one of the strangest things about being an actor is, it’s almost freelance work. – Paul Dano
There’s a lot of people that I would love to work with. There’s a lot of different kinds of parts I wanna play. As your career progresses, you hope that you get some more opportunity or some more choice. – Paul Dano
There’s that thing that if you want to have any kind of lasting love, I think you have to love the whole person and not just the parts of them that you choose. – Paul Dano
I think that the Western went away for a while because part of its function was that it used to be America’s action film. – Paul Dano
I’m a sucker for period pieces. There is always great opportunity for research and to delude yourself into feeling like you are in a different time and place. – Paul Dano
People think memorizing lines is hard, when that’s the last thing you worry about. You get that done, and then you’ve got to worry about the internal stuff, which is the challenging part. – Paul Dano
When I’m not acting, I like to go home and be really normal. So I usually grow out my hair until I get the next part. – Paul Dano
One of my favorite things I read was John Steinbeck’s journals while he was writing ‘East of Eden,’ which was so cool. – Paul Dano
It’s hard to talk about acting because I don’t think it’s quite as explicit as a lot of people might think. And that’s probably the best thing about it. – Paul Dano