Ambivalent Quotes

On her best friend, Phoebe Cates: "Your best friend is the only one who would tell you the person you are in love with is a sexually ambivalent man-child."

I`ve had some ambivalent feelings about being an actor. I don`t know that I`ve ever been totally and completely comfortable with it.

(1998) "I create challenges by the roles I take. I`m sort of proud of the fact that I`m not really typecast. People are always trying to get a handle on what you do. With me either it`s my sex trilogy - Fatal Attraction (1987), Basic Instinct (1992) and Disclosure (1994) - or my businessman trilogy - Wall Street (1987), The Game (1997) and this picture I`m doing now called A Perfect Murder (1998). I`ve been fortunate that, within those categories, I`ve been able to choose different types of roles, and I am proud that the audience has been able to accept me in whatever type of role I play. They are not the typical `movie star` roles. They`re more ambivalent characters. Sometimes they are morally depraved. They are not the outright positive type of images that you attribute to selecting a `star` type role. And the pictures themselves are more oddball. I`ve been very fortunate in that area, too. I`ve taken chances and so far the audiences have basically condoned those choices. They have allowed me to do those different types of roles. I do pictures for myself, because I figure if I like them, some other crazy people out there might like them, too. You know, once you`ve gained your confidence and done some bizarre, strange films with some roles that have been successful, it gives you the confidence to go out there and take more chances."

The more ambivalent you are and the more uncertain you are, then you can get something that you cannot anticipate.

He used to sit on my lap. I was sort of ambivalent about that. He was surviving any way he could.

I`m ambivalent about Patton (1970). I`m kind of a half-assed pacifist and I must tell you, you know, your philosophy is as strong as your feelings on a particular day. If you`re feeling good and you`ve accomplished something, you can back your philosophies to the hilt. And I don`t know what happened, but I decided I`m not going to glorify this thing. I wasn`t going to glorify war . . . I was a schmuck, because if I did "Patton" half as good as Mr. Scott (George C. Scott), I might have walked into The Godfather (1972). So that was a big mistake.

(on the detractors of The Rules of Attraction (2002)) It does not matter to me if you hate the movie. What matters to me is if you are ambivalent. Anybody can do "thumbs up, thumbs down". That`s the real problem with film criticism today. It`s been reduced to "I like it, I dislike it". Criticism should be more of an examination of exactly why a film makes you feel the way you feel.