John Cusack (Actor)

"I find it interesting that people always equate money with success. I thought I was successful; I was working with the best filmmakers, John Sayles, Woody Allen, Stephen Frears. But other people say, 'Why aren't you in those $100 million films?' And I said 'I don't know, I just didn't like the scripts.' [But] you also feel if you wanna make 'Gross Pointe Blank' and things like that, you play with the system and do one of the big movies. It just gives you more freedom to do what you wanna do." - Cusack on taking on a role in the action blockbuster "Con Air" to Daily News, April 7, 1997

"I'm interested in doing stuff that people I admire do, which is try to explore being human and admit that you're human," he said. "At least admit it in film, if you can't do it everyday in life." - Cusack quoted to CNN.com, Nov. 9, 2007

"If I go to Chicago and I go out to dinner, it's in the papers the next day. If you let off steam at someone, even if they deserve it, it's in the papers the next day. So that's kind of a drag, but there's got to be a trade off for being able to create and make a lot of money and get all this opportunity." - Cusack quoted in The Los Angeles Times, April 18, 1999

"It's sort of a selfish instinct, I'm just trying to make stuff that I would be excited to work in. The worst thing is to wait around and be at the whim of directors and producers who want you to do their thing, who might not have anything to say about your character, but since they are in a position of power, you've gotta work with them for six months. Why not just do it yourself?" - Cusack on trying his hand at different aspects of the film industry to The Los Angeles Times, Oct. 16, 1994

"You want to hear my brilliant strategy? I don't have one. I just see a lot of talented young actors who burn out, or get such a bad rep with their romantic-poetic-destructive bullshit that no one gives them work. They think they have to be Van Gogh and suffer enormously. They don't have the political savvy to make it through. I'm here for the long haul, directing, producing, everything." - Cusack on his status as a respected and successful actor, quoted in Premiere, March 1996

In 2002, Cusack attended a school board meeting of the Schoolhouse Foundation. He then helped cover the groups adminstrative costs.

In addition to his large body of film work, Cusack has directed, produced and written for as well as acted on the stage. In 1986 he co-founded New Crime Productions, a Chicago-based troupe specializing in experimental theater. He has staged an adaptation of Hunter S Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and in 1990 won Chicago's Joseph Jefferson citation for his direction of "Methusalem."