Jason Bateman Is My Hero

Jason Bateman, more recently of Arrested Development fame, had this to say about his acting career which I found pretty damn inspirational. I think a lot of semi-famous actors today could take a page out of his book (from the Ottawa Citizen article which I'm sure people are starting to think I read too much of):

"I'm just trying not to screw it up," he says, and that means knowing his place in the hierarchy and taking smaller roles in better films.

He wants to be a supporting player with big stars, the people he calls "the cool kids:" actors like Jennifer Garner and Jamie Foxx (from The Kingdom), or Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helen Mirren (from State of Play, an upcoming film in which he plays a bisexual sex club promoter), or Will Smith and Charlize Theron (from John Hancock, which he just finished.)

"Any movie I'm offered the lead of right now is a pretty stinky movie," he says.

"The films I'm offered to do, where I'm the lead, are not great scripts. The films I'm offered to do where I'm third or fourth down on the call sheets, they're pretty good films, because numbers one, two and three on the call sheet are great actors, so they have consequently attracted a great director."

He's even willing to play second banana in a movie that was his own idea: an action comedy called The Remarkable Fellows about two "revenge specialists" who hire themselves out to rich people who want to pay back their enemies. He calls it Dirty Rotten Scoundrels meets The Bourne Identity, and he plans to play No. 2 brother, "and some great big huge guy will be the star. A cool kid."