My dad always played a lot of music, so I heard him playing all the time, and then I decided that I wanted to learn to play guitar, so I got an acoustic and started taking lessons. I wanted to be able to shred like Yngwie Malmsteen. – Oscar Isaac
Being someone with Latin roots, so many doors are constantly closed for you because people put you in a category, and the thing I’ve always wanted to avoid is categorisation. – Oscar Isaac
How do you play ‘righteous’? Do you just kind of stand up straighter? What does that mean as an actor? You don’t really play a quality. – Oscar Isaac
With Shakespeare, there’s no subtext; you’re speaking exactly what you’re thinking constantly. – Oscar Isaac
I’ve done movies I’m very proud of, but there’s always a sense of: ‘Come see this shiny new car!’ The question I hate the most is: ‘Why should people see it?’ – Oscar Isaac
There’s very few geniuses that come and revolutionize everything. For the rest of us that want to be artists and have something to say, it’s a lot of work and a lot of luck. – Oscar Isaac
I grow up in the States, in Miami, but I was born in Guatemala, and my father’s Cuban, and in ‘Body of Lies,’ I played an Iraqi. – Oscar Isaac
A lot of very successful businessmen share some of these sociopathic traits – a lack of empathy, seeing people as commodities, projecting an air of sincerity when everything is actually calculated. – Oscar Isaac
I like films that take their time a little bit more and don’t show you all of their cards right away, characters that are conflicted and contradicting and seem one way at first and then suddenly turn out to be something else. – Oscar Isaac
I remember the first time my mind was blown by an actor was Tim Curry, because I loved ‘Clue’ when I was a kid, and then I was watching the movie ‘Legend,’ and the Devil suddenly smiles, and I was like, ‘It’s the same guy!’ It was a total Keyser Soeze moment. – Oscar Isaac
I’ve never been much of a guitarist. I mean, I’ve played forever, but I was always more of a rhythm kind of guy. I don’t read music. – Oscar Isaac
Anything that’s made by humans is about humans, whether it’s about gods or aliens or anything; it’s about some sort of expressive nature about us. – Oscar Isaac
I played guitar and bass. I didn’t do much vocals, although I did have one band where I was the lead singer. But that was when I was in college. – Oscar Isaac
When I came up to New York to do a play, I passed by Julliard, and I was like, ‘Oh I heard of this place.’ I applied, and ended up getting in. – Oscar Isaac
I’m very happy to have the heritage that I do, but I’m not wanting to be ‘the Latino actor.’ I just want to be ‘an actor.’ – Oscar Isaac
I don’t know why people are so obsessed with finding out stuff before the movie comes out. It’s so much more fun to just go. I mean, I don’t do that. I don’t go looking for stuff that I’m interested in, you know, to try and find out pictures and what the movie’s about. It’s so much more fun to be surprised. – Oscar Isaac
I think it’s good to be a little more fearless in saying what you feel. In not being scared of the repercussions of that. – Oscar Isaac
There’s very few people – like Shakespeare – who, no matter what, were gonna do what they did. For the rest of us, there’s a lot of events that have to happen in order for things to end up the way they are. – Oscar Isaac
I was never much of a singer. I was terrible. It’s embarrassing: I was trying to sound like everybody else. I went through a big Cure phase, so I was trying to do that kind of dramatic voice. – Oscar Isaac
I always joked with my parents. I told them, ‘If I don’t make it as an actor, my fallback is musician.’ – Oscar Isaac
