Cuba Gooding Jr. Quotes

I don't want to do every independent film offered to me.

People look at stuff like 'Godzilla' and 'Avengers' and think I only do blockbusters, or however you wanna put it, but in reality, I can make double or triple what I got paid for 'Avengers' by doing other stuff - there are other options, but I don't want to work with this person or that person, and so I don't do it.

The only real reason that I'd have for working for Hollywood is the fantastic amounts of money involved, and that isn't enough of an incentive to really give up the degree of control that I have over my work at the moment with comics. I suppose that's probably why I don't have any designs on being a screenwriter.

At first, when 'Boxer' came out, people were a little let down, and we worried that it might be the end for us. But then it began to grow on people. 'Boxer' bought us our creative freedom.

If people knew what made hits they'd make more of them, so to have the illusion of control over one's career isn't something I can even pretend to have.

My partner, Beth Alexander, and I want to produce smaller films, but commercially viable films that will enable me to make the kinds of movies I want to make.

The problem with making movies is that you have to devote so much of your life to fawning and flattering the men in suits, whereas that doesn't happen in books. You just go and write, and then the book comes out.

I'm not interested in making a $60-million studio film with a bunch of 24-year-olds telling me what to do.

After I do a big movie I get offered big movies. But I always do the weirdest indie.

Other people have worked with big studios and maintained control over their movies. I see no reason why it wouldn't work for me.

When 'Tracks' first came out, I was courted by Sydney Pollack. I had lunch with him, and he opened the conversation with, 'Honey, you ain't gonna like what I'm gonna do to your book.' I really liked him, but I turned him down, because - well, I was stupid. I also turned down a great deal of money.

Shooting in Hong Kong, you can do whatever you want, even change the script every day. In Hollywood, you have to have a lot of meetings.

I think it's the actor's job - when you think of being typecast or getting out of the shadow of whatever you've had success in - it's up to you as an actor. The industry will always want to hire you for what you were successful in last and what made money. But you can say no to that and look for other parts.

Luckily, I haven't been offered any $300 million movies that I hate. So I'm not in that predicament just yet.

I still make more money as I do as an actor than director, however I don't want to be a commercial director.

I am one day going to be working openly in the motion picture industry. When that day comes, I swear to you that I will never sign a term contract with any major studio.

The film business has so many twists and turns that it's a miracle any film gets made.

There are really only a handful of directors who have a final cut clause in Hollywood. You only get that power if you've made a couple of hundred-million-dollar successes.

I've been lucky enough to work with some great directors, and I don't want to throw that away by doing one big horrible big budget film.

One quality that a director needs to acquire in Hollywood is to understand the system and figure out how to work within the system to express one's own ideas.

I would have happily done 'Bourne Legacy,' but a lot of decisions are made for you.

I did get offers from Hollywood, but they were all scripts with monsters in them. If I had done them, I would have disappeared. I would have come back to France anyway, and I would have had to start all over again and lost a lot of time.

Obviously, after every film you do, you wonder what you're going to do next.

The biggest risk is not taking any risk... In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

I've done 21 films in eight years, and I've said 'No' more times than I've done films.