Jason Bateman
Jason Bateman
Jason Kent Batemanis an American actor, director, and producer who rose to prominence as a high-profile adolescent actor in the 1980s, in sitcoms such as Silver Spoons and The Hogan Family, before returning in the early 2000s in the role of Michael Bluth on the critically acclaimed sitcom Arrested Development, for which he won a TV Land Award, a Golden Globe, and a Satellite Award. He has since established himself in Hollywood by appearing in several films, including Juno, Hancock,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth14 January 1969
CityTown Of Rye, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Improvisation, for me, is when the cameras start rolling, we don't know where we're going and let's just waste people's time and money.
Throughout my 20s I spent a lot of time just playing and not really working, but fortunately for me I continued to get just enough work, and have a reason to wake up in the morning. I really empathize with some of my peers who had success in the early years then it dries up, and so there's no reason to get up in the morning.
I like being hired to do more and more stuff. Carry more and more responsibility. It's nice I'm getting that trust.
I did a good bit of episodic television directing, but directing a movie is so much more complicated. And there's so much more responsibility because the medium is very much a director's medium. Television is much more of a producer's writer's medium so a lot of the time when you're directing a television show they have a color palette on set or a visual style and dynamic that's already been predetermined and you just kind of have to follow the rules.
Our job, as actors, is to just try to be as accurate and as mindful of what the audience is going through and receiving and processing. If it's a situation where the character should look a little bit out of control or do something stupid, it's your job to act into that, in a believable way.
I don't get a chance to cry that often on film, so I was hoping that talent would come my way, that day. I cheated, I guess, when I just started looking at my technology device - my iPhone - to look at pictures of my kids, before I did the scene where I had to cry. That was a good trick that I found.
I don't really find a problem with technology or television, or anything. I'm a product of it. I grew up watching TV, and I don't think I'm too dumb or too crazy.
Guys like Will Ferrell, Vince Vaughn, Sacha Baron Cohen, they do things you love to watch. I like to do the other half.
And I've always loved commercials. I like working out how to organically weave a brand's message into the writing process. It's like an improv show, where comics ask the audience to throw out a word and a skit is built around it.
There are worse things than being constantly hired to do anything.
I'm in a little bit of a different situation, because working in the business that I do and living in the city that I live in, I haven't had a problem with people who are gay. Since I was 10 I've been working alongside them, and some of my best friends are gay.
Will Arnett is one of the funniest guys I know. He has seen it all and done it all and come out the other end pretty savvy and pretty strong.
I've always felt bad that I never had more information to give people when they asked me about it, but I guess people kind of got frustrated by that and they just started kind of making up their own sort of "well, we haven't heard that much" or "news hasn't changed so it must be going away".
If people are going to complain about stereotyping, it's as likely to be Italian-Americans as gay people.