Favorite quotes from the Golden Globe Best Actor Nominees for Drama

LOS ANGELES — One very tough category to be in this year is the Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama in the coming Golden Globe Awards on January 5.

There were a lot of outstanding performances but only five actors got the nod – Christian Bale for “Ford v. Ferrari,” Antonio Banderas for “Pain and Glory,” Adam Driver for “Marriage Story,” Joaquin Phoenix for “Joker” and Jonathan Pryce for “The Two Popes.”

Below are some of our favorite quotes from this brilliant group:

Christian Bale

I want to ask you about your relationship to speed. How much do you enjoy life in a fast lane and how much do you enjoy a slower pace in life?

"I think I’ve recently been quite specifically focused on living life in the slow lane. I’m really enjoying that much more right now. I mean look, there’s just the basic sort of…I’ve got a lot of metal in my body from literally trying to live life in the fast lane, of just crashes and whatnot, not obviously to their level. But I enjoy it immensely. I’m 45 and I’m not bouncing back from injuries and surgeries as quickly as I used to and so I’ve kind of said to myself, just really enjoy the art of doing things really slowly for a while, let’s try that one out for a bit. And I’m enjoying that right now. But it’s undeniable when you get into a car that’s as good as something like the GT40, we only drove the replicas because the originals are just too bloody expensive, but I really would have fun with the Cobras and you can slide those things around the corner, they just want to slide, they’re begging to slide. And of course, it’s addictive, you feel sort of godlike. And these guys were going at 230 miles an hour down the Mulsanne straight, not knowing if the brakes are going to work at the end of that straight, knowing that every time they go out, they’re highly likely to die. And that to me is a fascinating mindset to get into and well worth you watching the movie about gentlemen of that ilk."

Antonio Banderas

It must have been an amazing journey for you to do this film because it is so rich with nuance. Can you just talk about what challenged you and what was the most interesting part for you of this very rich story?

"The challenge is always difficult to play somebody who exists (Pedro Almodovar).  If that person is actually your friend it’s a little more challenging and if that person is behind the camera then it’s even more extraordinarily difficult and challenging.  But it came to me, a very pleasant experience for many different reasons and starting probably, I said it last night in the theater in front of an audience that unconsciously I started creating this character nine years ago.  And it happened during the shooting of “The Skin I Live In,” because after, “The Skin I Live In,” is the first film movie I did with Almodovar, for 22 years that we didn’t work together.  And so I came to the rehearsals of “The Skin I Live In” kind of cocky, Pedro, not working with him for 22 years, and working with the Americans, I have learned many things about acting, I feel more secure in front of the camera, I can do this, I can do that, I can trust my voice.  And Pedro, after several rehearsals, he said to me yeah you know what, all of those things you have learned in America, are not very useful to me. They may be very useful for your American directors but not for me, where are you? 

And so at that time, I actually kind of, not confronted him, but in a way, I disagreed, and so it was a tense shooting.  Always, he is my friend, when I say tension, I am talking about creative tension right?  Then I saw the movie here in Toronto in front of an audience for the first time and I realized that he was able to bring out of me a character that I didn’t even know I had inside.  And so that opened a reflection and I had to be humble.  Be humble and when he called me again, the circumstances had changed for many different reasons.  But I wanted to know just two things, why he wanted to do this movie at this particular time in his life and why he wanted me to play him, an alter ego of Pedro Almodovar.  And so that’s how we started working on this project, just doing a clean slate, trying to just start some scratch and trying to create a character from nothing, not using the tools that I knew would make this work in one direction or another for me, that I was using for many years, in other movies, but just trying to renew completely what I had as an actor in front of me and do a character that doesn’t have anything to do with what I have done before."

Adam Driver

Do you have a playful side?

"I hope so.  I don’t think of myself as being intense, I don’t want to waste time, that’s for sure and I consider getting a chance to make a movie is an incredible opportunity to, someone is paying millions of dollars, we are being away from our family, to be in a hole, not necessarily a hole, but isolated somewhere to work on this thing and someone is going to film it and it’s going to last forever, it better be worth it.  There should be, you can’t hide from it, you can’t hide yourself from it, you have to show up and give everything.  Cause I know what the potential of that could be, you are making a document that maybe could reach someone who is in a part of the world that has nothing to do with you, and that’s my experience with film and cinema being in a small town in Indiana and watching Scorsese movies or Fellini or Godard, something that really opens your imagination and what a great thing about films is that they are so democratic and they can find their audience.  What an opportunity that is, why would you not want to try to make that the best version you can in the time that you have?  So, if that comes across as intense, that’s not my intention I guess, I don’t think of it, I am not aware of the condition, I just don’t want to waste the time and the opportunity."

Joaquin Phoenix

Your character Arthur has a very close relationship with his mother. So I wondered what did your mother teach you growing up about women or any other lessons to help you in your life?

"Yeah my mom has affected me or inspired me most, she’s a really incredible woman who is, while I was in Toronto, she was in Eastern Europe with her non-profit organization named after my brother, called the “River Phoenix Center for Peace Building.” And they teach non-violent communication and restorative justice practices to name a few.  So, she was there doing that, and I was in Toronto actually changing the world. But she’s a constant source of inspiration to me and she is 75 years old, and she has dedicated her life to this organization, she works as a volunteer for it, and they are making real progress.  So, I think she’s been a profound influence on me as well as my sisters."

Jonathan Pryce

You did the musical “Miss Saigon” with Lea Salonga. Talk about working with her.

"Working with Lea was a wonderful experience. She was 17, 18 when we started and a naive person, knew very little about the real life, she’d been a child performer for years. Things like, in the theater you’re supposed to tip your dresser at the end of each week and you give them 10 pounds, 20 pounds, whatever and Lea hadn’t been tipping and I mentioned this to her that you’re expected to give your dresser something, and she gave her 10 pence because she had no idea about the world and money, which of course was wonderful for the whole experience playing that character, this naïve character. But I played that character for two years, a year in London, almost a year on Broadway and the scary thing was I could have carried on doing it because it was completely sung, no dialogue you had to deal with in between, it was like therapy, music therapy. And every night I would stop and listen to Lea singing and every night when she sang “I Would Give My Life to You” to her child, I would get a lump in my throat. Every night. And she’s got this…she’s extraordinary. And I see her on YouTube now, that’s the only time I see her, where she’s become this more mature performer but still an extraordinary voice. Yeah, it was great."

—JCB, GMA News