14 Quotes From Nostalgic Actors And Actresses We Saw In 2022 That Really Stuck With Us

Mila Kunis gained national fame by starring as Jackie Burkhart in That '70s Show. While most of the cast was older than 18, Kunis was only 14, and famously lied about her age to get the role. 

One of her co-stars, Kurtwood Smith, was friends with Robin Williams, who visited him on set one day. Kunis went over and introduced herself, and Williams told her something she's never forgotten: 

He said, "Remember this moment. Remember this because things like this don't happen very often. Remember this time." Having somebody of Robin Williams's stature tell me to just acknowledge something meant so much. He didn't mentor me. He just said, "Step back and appreciate this. You're having an amazing time."

Matthew Lewis is best known for portraying Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter movie series. Throughout the 10 years of filming eight movies, Lewis rubbed elbows with some of the greats in the film industry. 

This included Alan Rickman, who portrayed Professor Severus Snape. On Rickman's last day of filming on the final movie, Lewis shared how he went to Rickman's trailer to thank him for his work:

Thank you for allowing me to work with you for 10 years and not ever shout at me or treating any of us as anything less than your equal. And he was like, "Come on in." And he put the kettle on, and we had a cup of tea, and we chatted about what I was going to do in my career moving forward and what he recommended I do.

Lewis went on to say that Rickman gave him an invaluable piece of advice:

He said, "You can do it!" He said those words. He recommended theater, and that’s why I did some theater. I learned so much more about myself as not only an actor but [also] as a person and what I want out of life; I learned that on stage.

Winona Ryder was just 14 when she made her film debut in Lucas (1986). She began taking acting classes at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater at age 12, but also attended regular school. During her first week at Petaluma's Kenilworth Junior High School in California, she found herself the target of bullies.

In a 2000 interview for Harper's Bazaar, Ryder recalled that incident, and what happened when she ran into one of her tormentors years later:

I was wearing an old Salvation Army shop boy’s suit. I had a hall pass, so I went to the [girls’] bathroom. I heard people saying, “Hey, f*ggot.” They slammed my head into a locker. I fell to the ground and they started to kick the sh*t out of me. I had to have stitches. The school kicked me out, not the bullies. 

Years later, I went to a coffee shop in Petaluma, and I ran into one of the girls who’d kicked me, and she said, “Winona, Winona, can I have your autograph?” and I said, “Do you remember me? I went to Kenilworth. Remember how, in seventh grade, you beat up that kid?” and she said, “Kind of,” and I said, “That was me. Go f*ck yourself!”

In a 1994 interview with Life magazine, Ryder said being put on home study for a while was “great,” because it led to her beginning classes at ACT and later getting an agent. The bullies, she said, “gave me my career.”

Michael Clarke Duncan was a bodyguard for numerous celebrities including the Notorious B.I.G. and Queen Latifah. According to Duncan, he was supposed to guard Biggie on the night the rapper died, but traded spots with a colleague:

A co-worker friend of mine called because he was supposed to guard Babyface that night but he liked being in that [hip-hop] limelight and I didn’t. He asked to switch, so I went to pick up Babyface, he went to pick up Notorious B.I.G., and the rest is history. 

After hearing about Biggie's demise the next day, Duncan quit working security. He explained to his employer that he wasn't "willing to put his life on the line" for someone, and that's what the job entailed.

Duncan also guarded the likes of Will Smith, Jamie Foxx, and LL Cool J, but had someone else in mind when he was asked about his most difficult security job in 2011. He told BET:

I think the hardest one [I had to bodyguard] was Queen Latifah. Because she was doing Living Single at the time and I used to have to go to her trailer and get her out… She preferred to get on my back and get a piggyback ride to the set, which was maybe like 75 yards away. So, you know I wasn’t going to tell her no… That was one of the highlights of my bodyguard career that nobody knew about. But she was a lot of fun and we had a good time.

Skeet Ulrich made hearts miss a beat when he played deranged killer Billy Loomis in the 1996 thriller Scream. It was his first major role, which he reprised in the 2022 movie of the same name.

Ulrich, born Bryan Ray Trout, said he had a troubled childhood. When he was 6, the actor said in an interview, his father, a chef, "kidnapped" him and his brother, Geoff Trout. The brothers spent three years living an unstable life before being reunited with their mother, after which their father disappeared from their lives. 

His mother married former race car driver D.K. Ulrich, and the actor adopted his stepfather's surname, while his coach called him Skeeter because he was a sickly child. At age 10, Ulrich had to have an operation for a heart defect. 

Ulrich chose to slow down his acting career when he and his wife, actor Georgina Cates, divorced in 2005, and he got primary custody of the couple's twins, Jakob and Naiia Ulrich.

Coming from a broken family, Ulrich said he decided it was more important to be a dad:

I would never let my kids feel unwanted. That was the prime motivation. You know, they’re just a lot of fun to be with and be around. I had an analyst in New York. When I went there, we went over and over and over my childhood. I came to the conclusion it would never be fixed. He told me when I had kids it would be. I didn’t understand that when I was 23, but he was right. I get to re-experience my own childhood in a new way and be the parent I wish I’d had.

Jake Johnson appeared alongside Tom Cruise in the 2017 film The Mummy. The New Girl star portrayed Chris Vail, a US Army corporal, while Cruise played his friend Nick Morton, a former Army Sergeant. Johnson, who had little experience working on an action film prior to The Mummy, told Thrillist he was flattered the role had been written with him in mind, but he had doubts about working with Cruise:

I panicked! I know his [reputation]. He does his own stunts. I read the first act [of the movie] and it’s like, ”Nick and Vail jump off a three-story building as it explodes, they feel the heat on their backs." And when you read those little things somebody has to actually do that. That meant the fire would be touching us! That meant I was jumping through fire and I was like, “I don’t want to jump through fire!”

But he flew to London to meet with Cruise, who talked Johnson into taking the role. The movie star ended up working with Johnson to get the younger actor in shape for the production:

Tom said, “I really want you fit for this movie.” I literally thought I was going to have to call [New Girl actor] Max Greenfield to do CrossFit. But Tom said, “You’ll be training with me and my trainers. If you want I’ll put you on a food plan with my chef. The food is great…” He [also] said I could use his gym whenever I wanted. 

One day I got to work to work out and one of the [assistant directors] goes, “You can’t go in right now because Tom is working out.” I thought, “That sucks, I got here an hour early to get this in, but he’s Tom Cruise.” After, when we were shooting later that day, he said, “What happened to you? I thought you said you were going to work out this morning?” I told him I was told not to bother him and he got really pissed. He said, “Let me make something crystal clear: I don’t care what anybody on the crew says to you, they don’t know what I’m saying to you. And I’m saying to you that you are always welcome. I don’t care what I’m doing in there. You’re not other. You’re my castmate. Come in.”