RICK BAKER

The problem I have with schools is, people are taught, 'This is how you do this.' They're not taught about why you do this.

So many of my dreams were to actually be able to make a living of what I did as a hobby.

When my parents died, it became clear to me that there was an end in sight. Death was never a real thing to me. And then when that happened I realized I only have so many years left, if I'm lucky.

The first time I made myself up, I was looking at my reflection in the mirror and it wasn't me looking back. It allowed me to do things I couldn't do as myself. I found out how powerful that was and how much that can mean to an actor.

I have a job that I truly love, and an enormous crew of people that can do things better than I can!

I do fat people and these makeups are really hard to do, but I want to make monster movies.

There's a limit to what I can do with a makeup or with animatronics.

Grinch had so many people in make up - virtually everybody. We had about 100 people a day for five months. And every day we would use 100 sets of appliances.

I always wanted to make aliens that looked like '60s aliens.

I have always tried to stay current.

Sometimes we think of a creature like a person in a suit, but then you have limitations of two eyes and two legs - they have to see and breathe. I got more into puppetry because it offered more possibilities.

I enjoy doing digital work. I enjoy sculpting digitally. I've had my digital sculptures on covers of the top digital magazines.

When you're working on a movie you always hope that people will go for it and enjoy what you're doing.

So many people of my generation all grew up with that shock theater package on television of 'Frankenstein,' 'Wolfman,' 'Dracula,' 'Mummy,' all the Universal stuff.

I can't tell you how many people would say to me as a teenager, 'Why don't you grow up and start thinking about getting a real job?'

I do a lot of CG stuff for fun.

I love making scary faces, that's just how I grew up.

When I do a mask, I do try to put a lot of character and a lot of expression into the sculpt.

I'm amazed that movies ever get finished at all - much less come out good once in a while. It's an awful lot of work and it can go wrong a thousand different ways.

I've said this so many times but there's a magic when you have a really good actor in a really good makeup.

I'm not a big gore hound but monster gore is different to me than killing a teenager in any way that you can when another human-like person does it. I don't know how I rationalize that really but it seems different to me.

Usually people who are in my position, they run a company and they hire people and then they take the credit for it.

There are so many decisions in making a movie.

I'm not really listed anywhere; I don't know how people find me!

I find it kind of disturbing when people cheer when someone just gets stabbed brutally.