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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Will Ferrell Quotes

James Caan told me at the end of filming ‘Elf’ that he had been waiting through the whole film for me to be funny – and I never was.

– Will Ferrell

My dad turned me onto Peter Sellers as a kid. I loved the fact that he was a unique combination of being extremely subtle and over-the-top all at the same time, and that’s a hard thing to do. I admire that.

– Will Ferrell

I remember going with my mom to a random garage sale as a kid and thinking what a cool treasure hunt that whole world was. Only to transition as an adult to think, ‘What a gross place that really is.’

– Will Ferrell

Inappropriate behavior makes me laugh.

– Will Ferrell

I’ve always had, when I needed it, an extreme amount of focus that I could put into something. That has served me well.

– Will Ferrell

I was a strange kid in that, while most kids hate school and want to turn 18 or 21, I loved high school.

– Will Ferrell

I was never a class clown or anything like that, but I do remember being in the first grade and my teacher, Mr. Chad, told the class one day that we were going to do some exercises. He meant math exercises, but I stood up and started doing jumping jacks. To this day, I don’t know what possessed me to do that, but all my friends cracked up.

– Will Ferrell

The funny guy doesn’t get the girl until later in life. High school, college, everyone still wants the brooding, dangerous guy you shouldn’t have.

– Will Ferrell

I will watch a movie that is quote unquote dark and not get the qualification of what is dark and what is not.

– Will Ferrell

Anyone who does anything creative is always gonna want to change.

– Will Ferrell

By the time I was ready for college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I think I secretly wanted a show business career, but I was suppressing it.

– Will Ferrell

I don’t really have aspirations to be Tom Hanks.

– Will Ferrell

I have only been funny about seventy four per cent of the time. Yes I think that is right. Seventy-four per cent of the time.

– Will Ferrell

My kind of wanting to be funny didn’t come from need, necessarily. The closest I can analyze it is that it was an easy way to make friends, I found out. It was just a great kind of social tool.

– Will Ferrell

You tend to get reluctant to talk about anything until the day before filming.

– Will Ferrell

I love playing the macho guy who looks like an idiot.

– Will Ferrell

I left ‘Saturday Night Live’ without a film to go to, and I’d filmed ‘Old School’ while I was in my last season of the show, and that hadn’t come out yet. I was a free agent, in a way, but I knew it was time to leave the show and test the water.

– Will Ferrell

I still regret that I never played soccer in high school. I chose basketball over soccer.

– Will Ferrell

For people who have done comedy after a certain point in time, I think there’s a base level of, ‘O.K., I think I’m decently funny.’ But unless you just have some massive ego, I really think you’re still fighting against that.

– Will Ferrell

I know the nature of comedy, and you never know what will happen with the next movie or whether people will find it funny.

– Will Ferrell

Aren’t we all striving to be overpaid for what we do?

– Will Ferrell

In the fourth grade, I learned how to fake walking into a door. You know, you hit it with your hand and snap your head back. The girls loved it.

– Will Ferrell

There’s nothing sexy about Orange County.

– Will Ferrell

I always find it actually funny that the analysis is that the characters I play in comedies are the manchild, the adolescent, characters that refuse to grow up. And yet, if you look back in the history of comedy all the way back to the Marx brothers, that’s a big part of comedy.

– Will Ferrell

I’ve always loved watching the news on TV. As a kid, I loved watching Walter Cronkite, for some reason.

– Will Ferrell

When you hear that you’re going to be working with a first-time director, sometimes that can be a concern to people.

– Will Ferrell

I think a lot of the instincts you have doing comedy are really the same for doing drama, in that it’s essentially about listening. The way I approach comedy, is you have to commit to everything as if it’s a dramatic role, meaning you play it straight.

– Will Ferrell

I’ve never been a conceited person or cocky, never felt boastful, but I always had a sense of self-worth; I always had a real sense of myself.

– Will Ferrell

Saturday Night Live is such a comedy boot camp in a way, because you get to work with so many different people who come in to host the show and you get thrown into so many situations and learn how to think on your feet, so filmmaking actually feels slow, in a good way.

– Will Ferrell

I always just forced myself to do crazy things in public. In college I would push an overhead projector across campus with my pants just low enough to show my butt. Then my friend would incite the crowd to be like, ‘Look at that idiot!’ That’s how I got over being shy.

– Will Ferrell

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