Which are your favorite Jay Ryan quotes?
Jay Ryan is a New Zealand actor. He is most popularly known for his appearances as ‘Jack Scully’ in the widely celebrated Australian soap opera ‘Neighbors’.
His recent role as the adult character of ‘Ben Hanscom’ in ‘It Chapter Two’, a sequel of top box office movie ‘It’, earned him a breakthrough in his acting career and more recognition in the U.S. film industry.
Ryan has also featured in many other popular TV series, such as ‘Go Girls’, ‘Top Of The Lake’, and ‘Beauty & the Beast’. Throughout his career as an actor, Ryan has successfully been nominated and won a couple of prestigious film awards, including the ‘Logie award’ and the ‘Equity Ensemble’.
Here’s a collection of the most humbling Jay Ryan quotes:
50 Jay Ryan Quotes About Acting, Work & Life
1. “My family aren’t performers. They’re just normal people. They don’t understand this entertainment world. They just think it’s mental. They have no idea what I’m doing in America.” – Jay Ryan
2. “There were many elements to the film that made it altogether a great time. Even though it’s a scary movie to film, it was more fun than being scared.” – Jay Ryan
3. “I don’t have phobias of clowns, I actually was a clown for one of my first jobs.” – Jay Ryan
4. “Even when I’m working on set I stay in my North American accent, so quite often some of my costars or the guest actors or even the drivers that pick me up from set don’t even hear me in this accent because as soon as I walk out the door I’m in the accent from top to bottom of the day.” – Jay Ryan
5. “So we (Brita and I) really delved into his backstory and what had happened to this man, and it was a deep dive for me. It was exciting to work that way because it meant any of the self-doubts you have on set wasn’t as prevalent. You don’t always get that time to fine-tune your characters.” – Jay Ryan
6. “I researched the original actor (Jeremy Ray Taylor) who played my character (in the first film) and did it in one take. They said “thank you very much”, and I left thinking that’s another one out, so time to go home. And I got the call when I was back in New Zealand saying they liked me, and because they didn’t really know too much about me they asked if I could send photos of myself as a kid to see if I matched up with Jeremy.” – Jay Ryan
7. “I was a very hyperactive child and my parents just didn’t know what to do with me.” – Jay Ryan
8. “I was shooting a mini-series for Sundance/BBC, called ‘Top of the Lake,’ that was shot by Jane Campion, who’s a beautiful native New Zealander and famous film director. The role I was playing was very intense, and they shaved half my hair off. So, I looked like this post-apocalyptic character.” – Jay Ryan
9. “They asked me if I wanted to look at the role, and then I had a few meetings with Roderick and discussed the role and his intentions with it. I didn’t essentially audition. I had the privilege of being asked to collaborate.” – Jay Ryan
10th of 50 Jay Ryan Quotes
10. “I guess I did get to tick a big one off the bucket list, though, and that was being on a giant billboard smack-bang in the hub of Hollywood Boulevard. That was… well, pretty Hollywood.” – Jay Ryan
11. “The original theme of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is don’t judge a book by its cover. Love what’s inside.” – Jay Ryan
12. “I was employed as a clown in a supermarket and I got like $15 an hour and at the time that was big money. I did the full makeup, I made animal balloons and I did magic tricks. So I did not have a phobia of clowns but I may have given other children a phobias just though my first outings in performance.” – Jay Ryan
13. “In film, you get a bit more of that (collaborative) canvas. I was about to chuck it all in.” – Jay Ryan
14. “I think a lot of people don’t even know I’m from New Zealand because quite often they see me on a show and I’m playing someone from North America.” – Jay Ryan
15. “When I was speaking to Roderick we had framed (my character) Sergeant Shaw as the antagonist, or one of the antagonists, but we put a new lens on it as there’s only one scene that I have with Ahmed (Malek) at the end of the film, so I’m antagonising from afar.” – Jay Ryan
16. “When I started on Mary Kills People, a lot of the sets and locations we went to I had worked in before so a lot of the local actors were like ‘how’d you know all these places in Toronto, we grew up here, you’ve only just arrived.” – Jay Ryan
17. “We didn’t want to give away too much of what the beast looked like. We didn’t want to show too much of him because we didn’t want it to look like a prosthetic mask. We wanted it to look real and intimidating.” – Jay Ryan
18. “We’re making Beauty and the Beast for the new generation, but we want to take these elements from the original. We also want to bring in the romantic elements of the original series, as well.” – Jay Ryan
19. “As an actor, I still get to delve into things in terms of what I wear, my costume, and my props. Also, if the makeup’s quite elaborate you get to collaborate on that too so it would definitely be in that realm for sure.” – Jay Ryan
20th of 50 Jay Ryan Quotes
20. “I feel like [showrunner] Brad [Kern] is really diving unto the mythology element, which kind of unravels the greater purpose of Vincent and Catherine’s destiny, as two people together.” – Jay Ryan
21. “I would want to be doing set design, creature design, or creature makeup – something crafty. I really enjoy that side of things.” – Jay Ryan
22. “I’ve trained in physical theater, so I love bringing that physical element to the beast.” – Jay Ryan
23. “I think Venice was one of the first ‘in-person’ festivals, so that was a real honour for him. And the film had its Middle Eastern premiere at the El Gouna Festival in Egypt, which is our leading man, Ahmed’s home country, and I was invited to go there as well – and I’ve always wanted to go to Egypt, especially with a film like this – but quarantine…so I stayed in my safe hub in New Zealand.” – Jay Ryan
24. “It was pretty cool and just to work with Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, and Bill Hader who was such a joy to work with every day because he’s as funny in real life as he is on Saturday Night Live.” – Jay Ryan
25. “Often when you watch a film that’s translated you’re looking at the images and then looking down at the translation. But with this, you almost know what they are saying without looking at the translation because it’s in and out of the film.” – Jay Ryan
26. “When I was doing my research with some undercover detectives and cops, they found that idea of crossing the line romantically with someone you’re trying to take down very unbelievable so I had to find a grounded way to make that work.” – Jay Ryan
27. “Hats off to Roderick and the producers who did the work. And the Aboriginal language used in the film is a sleeping language, meaning that the last known fluent speaker of the language passed away just before we started to shoot the film. So to be able to put it up on celluloid screen is pretty amazing.” – Jay Ryan
28. “I had spent almost five years here on a show called Beauty and the Beast in Toronto and New York but mostly Toronto so the city was very familiar to me.” – Jay Ryan
29. “There’s 5 languages in this film. I was only experiencing the English language, but when I got to see the film in its entirety and saw the huge effort that went into the film, and the inclusiveness… I thought it was spectacular.” – Jay Ryan
30th of 50 Jay Ryan Quotes
30. “I felt more comfortable playing other people than being myself, when I was a kid. And then, the tables turned. Through my performances, I’ve become more comfortable with who I am, and then I just bring more of myself into the people that I play.” – Jay Ryan
31. “Gary Fleder, who’s the original director of our pilot and who’s a great director, was also an EP on the other Beauty and the Beast pilot that was being made.” – Jay Ryan
32. “I really loved the first movie that Andres Muschietti directed although I’m not a horror fan in the respect that I get scared very easily and it’s ingrained in me in my dreams.” – Jay Ryan
33. “I had done a lot of television, and a scattering of film, and I had always wanted to get into film because I just love that process.” – Jay Ryan
34. “When I received the script from Roderick (MacKay) it just opened up a whole new world of Australian history for me. On the first page (of the script) it states that Western Australia has one of the largest wild camel populations in the world, and I thought what was this story about. And when I went on to read the script I was just completely gobsmacked by the story and this part of history we have little knowledge of.” – Jay Ryan
35. “Those military tests have been going on since the ‘40s and the ‘50s. There was a doctor who did all of these brain tests on animals, which is being studied for military stuff. So, for me, it’s very much based in reality. I believe this stuff could actually happen, which makes it exciting for me to play.” – Jay Ryan
36. “There’s many different roles I’d love to play. It’s hard to pinpoint who they are or what they are until I see them on a page and connect with them. However, I would love to delve more into period drama.” – Jay Ryan
37. “Top of the Lake was extremely challenging because it felt like another level of TV and it was a very heightened world but Jane Campion wanted to place it in this real grounded place.” – Jay Ryan
38. “Having glue stuck to your face in winter is not fun. It freezes as it hits the skin.” – Jay Ryan
39. “I always seem to get parts where I play the sports professional – and that’s not me at all!” – Jay Ryan
40th of 50 Jay Ryan Quotes
40. “In the 1800’s you don’t really get to see this notion of a struggling single father. It’s not really part of the story you see on screen, but for me as an actor to delve into why this man was in this situation to keep his son alive, that was what excited me the most.” – Jay Ryan
41. “I think the experience of working with a strong female creative team. They were incredible and they had this great collaborative spirit from the start, which I never really experienced before in a project.” – Jay Ryan
42. “I remember Roderick called one day during post-production, saying he was really happy with how the film was and that he wanted it to play at a top festival. And I said “they’re all shutting down, just sell it to Netflix!”, but to his credit, he held at and got it to one of the oldest, most respected festivals in history. He’s a real trooper in that sense.” – Jay Ryan
43. “A few people would be surprised to know that I’m not actually from North America. One time when I was doing Beauty and the Beast at the wrap party when we finished the series, I got up, did a speech, and thanked everybody and there was this big kind of like gasp in the crowd of the crew because they never heard my real accent before so they all felt a little bit deceived.” – Jay Ryan
44. “You know, I really love that they kept the character names of Catherine and Vincent because it’s almost like these are the modern versions, in this world that we’re in now, post-9/11. I think it’s a good idea.” – Jay Ryan
45. “Just being cast in that role was pretty exciting, it’s such an iconic story and book. Stephen King has this kind of impression on many people from a very young age whether it’s through the visuals of what those characters were or reading the books themselves.” – Jay Ryan
46. “I spoke to Roderick about it a little bit because it is such a vast ensemble that I didn’t want to bog him down with my character. After our discussions, I took what he said and worked on this particular project with a woman named Brita McVeigh. She’s a script and acting guru who lives in Sydney, and I had a couple of months before I had to be on set, so it was a real luxury to be able to delve and research into this character. ” – Jay Ryan
47. “I watched It Chapter 2 because for some reason that clown is imprinted in me in my brain as a child. I guess it was through the miniseries, which I don’t know how I saw it because I definitely would not be able to watch that as a kid.” – Jay Ryan
48. “The network made me join Twitter. I am very scared of social media, and I don’t know how to use it, so it’s kind of trial and error.” – Jay Ryan
49. “Just having the names of Catherine and Vincent is pretty romantic. They bring this nostalgia to it. I know fans of the original will probably get pissed off if they don’t like the re-imagining that we’re doing because we’ve used the character names, which is fair enough.” – Jay Ryan
50. “Coming from New Zealand and Australia are like a tough pre-school for Hollywood. And having been on ‘Neighbours,’ even though the agents I met with hadn’t seen it, they knew it’s where Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce had come from. It was a foot in the door.” – Jay Ryan
Summary
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