David Strathairn Quotes

I don`t think I could`ve carried the weight that Murrow carried.

It feels as if you put on a many-pocketed coat with 100 cell phones, all on vibe alert, and they all start going off at random times, and you begin to think, `This is pretty uncomfortable`. You can`t possibly answer all these phones, nor should you. `Buzz` - that`s really a quite apropos word. They say it`s great for the film. Well, if it`s great for the film, that`s great. (on the "buzz" surrounding him and his performance in Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005))

When you`re creating a character out of nothing, you have to make all the guesses as to how they walk, how they talk, how they think. It was all there on the table for us to pick and choose for Murrow.

If anyone was talking about journalism in the `50s - it was Edward R.Murrow.

So much money and energy is expended making a film that I think it should be used for positive ends.

You work enough with someone and you develop a shorthand. You know how he likes to work through the day and he knows where you`re vulnerable and where your weaknesses and strengths are, so it makes for a good team, a team that knows who`s over there behind your back.

Apart from stark fear, I was taken aback quite a bit. It was a huge responsibility to try and depict such a great man - such a great American.

I think George just nailed the whole thing, the whole time period, the whole look and feel of what that newsroom was like. I did a lot of research for the role and believe me, it`s all pretty genuine, down to the very last cigarette butt.

Television and film are our libraries now, our history books.

In order to crash the party and be a clown with your own skit, you had to be there for quite a while.

Artists, actors and performers are sometimes vilified for stepping outside of the workplace or using their work as a kind of bully pulpit.

It would be real nice to have some kind of bell or whistle attached to this film - it would give it a longer life. People seem to need that validation to go to a film these days.

I checked out all types of tobacco trying to find one that would be easiest to live with, I ended up using pipe tobacco. It burned slower, and it wasn`t as harsh on my throat... It also smelled better.

I think the film is beautifully realised. His legacy as a journalist was recorded - as it were - well, and certainly the important issues of the `50s - or even today - are delivered and presented to the audience in a rather honest and objective way.

Film is our literature, so we should tell stories that are apropos of our culture, in that we can learn something about ourselves.

There are biographies, I looked at a lot of photographs of him, I heard his voice over and over and over again. You get in there and get to know the man by all of those pieces of information.

If it`s a role like this one, an actual live person, a legend, there`s lots of material laid out.

Television and film are our libraries now. Our history books.

But I find it`s usually a collaboration. Very rarely does a lead exist without someone else holding on to the leash, so to speak.

It`s like a piece of music; you never lose sight of the theme. Each scene pushes off to the next like music builds and you can almost hear the next chord progression, so it has a strict structure, which is very compelling.

In this film George presents issues that are important, essential and vital, whoever you are, about constitutional rights and the bedrock of a democracy. I am drawn to those kinds of stories because they inspire me - they are responsible to a populace and responsible to man.