Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I started making movies in 1977, and I didn't even think about the idea that I would ever be on a television show. Once I finished the 'Guiding Light,' I was like, 'I'm done with television!'
I like playing complex, interesting characters. Sometimes I don't think there's much of a strong line between right and wrong for a character. Every character is somewhere on a moral spectrum.
I'm an actor. It's what I do. It's what I chose to do with my life when I was a little boy, and that's what Im still doing. I like to work. I came up with a work ethic, and that's just what I do.
I wanted to do something heroic if I was going to be on TV. And the first thing that appeals to me once I have decided I don't want to be the bad guy is to find things that are not black and white.
I don't really worry so much about image. I try to just live my own life, my personal life, to my own sense of morality. In terms of the kinds of characters that I play, well, they could be anything.
I think one of the most pervasive evils in this world is greed and acquiring money for money's sake. Once you have six houses and a plane, it's just about a number. It's never been anything I understood.
I try to show compassion to people I come into contact with and try to put good out, as much good as I can. But that's my life; that's not my work. With my work, my job is to walk in another man's shoes.
To me, the struggle is to try to make a less-well-written or less-well-rounded character and find who they are. If you really get it, and it's all on the page, then it's really just gonna pop out at you.
I don't read reviews. I haven't read them for probably 30 years. I can't. When they're bad, they're really rough, and when they're good, they're not good enough. You can always find something to stress over.
The whole industry is changing because so many people watch things on DVR, and they watch things on other platforms, and I think everybody is kind of scratching their heads about how this is going to play out.
There are people who tell you to shut up because you're just a celebrity, but pundits, talking heads, they're every bit the celebrity and a lot of them aren't any more qualified than the average man on the street.
For my wife and I, for so many years, a lot of our identity was based on being Hollywood haters. We were like, 'We're east-coast. We're New Yorkers. This is just a place that we have to come to, but not by choice.'
There is a lesson there about greed and it is a lesson I am willing to learn as well. Has it made me a distrustful person? I don't think so. But we probably look a bit more carefully at our financial situation now.
The hardest gig there is in entertainment is to be the lead in an hour show, especially if it's a show that's blood and guts and fighting. It's rough. I love to work, but to do something different is really exciting.
Part of being a man is learning to take responsibility for your successes and for your failures. You can't go blaming others or being jealous. Seeing somebody else's success as your failure is a cancerous way to live.
Part of being a man is learning to take responsibility for your successes, and for your failures. You can't go blaming others, or being jealous. Seeing somebody else's success as your failure is a cancerous way to live.
My brother is the lifelong musician, he made the choice to do that when we were very, very young kids. I remember him playing in bands and listening to the music he was writing in the house - he's nine years older than me.
My brother is the lifelong musician; he made the choice to do that when we were very, very young kids. I remember him playing in bands and listening to the music he was writing in the house - he's nine years older than me.
There's something therapeutic about nudity. Clothing is one of the external things about a character. Take away the Gucci or Levi's and we're all the same. But not when the nanny is around. But I will with my wife and kids.
I'm new to this TV thing, at least as an actor. It's a challenge. The thing I have to adjust to is the changing directors every week. That's new for me. I tend to establish with a director - and then two days later, he's gone.
One of the top comments I get from people is, 'Oh my God, you're like a regular person!' That's kind of a bizarre thing to live with. I know a lot of famous people, and their lives may not be regular, but they are regular people.
With 'Transparent'. When Amazon put 'Transparent' up, along with 'Bosch' and a few other things, I watched them, and I thought it was an interesting exercise. I didn't comment on them, but I was like, 'Okay, this is kind of cool.'
The most challenging work and the best work I've ever done was in a thing I did for PBS called 'Lemon Sky', a play by Lanford Wilson. I think it's the rawest, most complex work that I've had to do, and the thing I'm most proud of.
Some people have therapy, some people are alcoholics or they're in AA. Some people jump out of planes on weekends or find ways to release this kind of thing. And for me, it's acting. I find acting very therapeutic for whatever it is.
Show me an actor who doesn't want to be famous, and I'll show you a liar. Later, you realise that there's more to it than just the acquisition of fame, and money and girls. But that is what drives them and was what drove me, initially.
If you look at films about becoming a man, coming-of-age movies are made with 12-, 16-, 40-, 50-year-olds... For a guy to feel like hes a 100 percent grown-up is almost like giving up. Like admitting that youre on your way into the grave.
If you look at films about becoming a man, coming-of-age movies are made with 12-, 16-, 40-, 50-year-olds... For a guy to feel like he's a 100 percent grown-up is almost like giving up. Like admitting that you're on your way into the grave.
I just let the work speak for itself. An actor is not afraid to take risks; to put on different hats; to be a good guy, a bad guy, a victim, an abuser. There are all kinds of people in the world, and playing them is what acting is all about.
You have to have something in your life that's more important than the work. People don't really like to admit that. I think that you have to find something else. I don't know what it is. Is it yoga or God or politics? For me it's just family.
As I was coming up on the stage, there was one source that could make or break you, the New York Times. Inevitably there would be one actor singled out for a better review, or worse, than somebody else. The effect of that was cancerous, divisive.
I think there is a puritanical wind that is blowing. I have never seen such a lack of separation between church and state in America, I don’t believe in God, but if I did I would say that sex is a Godgiven right. Otherwise it’s the end of our species.
For years and years, people would say, 'The business is changing.' And I would say, 'The business is not changing. It's exactly the same as it was in the '70s, the '80s and the '90s.' But all of a sudden, the business changed, and it really did change.
'Animal House' was my first movie, so I didn't have anything to compare it to. I was a sight gag more than anything else. So I can't say it was one of those things where your life changes. When the movie came out, I had to ask for the night off at the bar.
The greats are 'The Shining', 'Rosemary's Baby', 'Don't Look Now', 'The Exorcist' - those movies were not really slashers: they were about psychological terror and had very deep emotional backdrops. If we do our best, '6 Miranda Drive' can be that kind of a movie.
SixDegrees.org is about using the idea that we are all connected to accomplish something good. It is my hope that Six Degrees will soon be something more than a game or a gimmick. It will also be a force for good, by bringing a social conscience to social networking.
You can sit around and complain that Hollywood doesn't make any good movies. But you can generate your own material. So I read books. I come up with ideas. I was the producer on 'The Woodsman' to help get that off the ground. Sometimes that extends itself to directing.
A moustache is actually the one thing I really can grow. One of the bad parts about my facial hair situation is that I can't grow sideburns. I'm happy to still have my own hair on my head, but I can't grow any sideburns. If you ever see me with sideburns, they're not real.
From an acting standpoint, when I was a kid, I thought I knew everything there was to know. As the years go by, this craft becomes more intensive as I get older. You realize how much more there is to know and to learn, and how much better you can get, if you really work at it.
My father was into fame and leaving his mark. He was a city planner, sort of a genius in that world, the Robert Moses of Philadelphia. He was on the cover of 'Time' once, and I remember going to his office and seeing, like, two hundred copies, which he would hand out to people.
I don't watch the movies I make, so I haven't seen 'Footloose' since it came out. You see this young, hungry actor, it's pretty fun. I was the only one they screen tested. It was an attempt by the director and producer to talk the head of the studio into hiring me because they didn't want me.
Fame is something that is tough when it comes. It's a weird thing to take on in real life. I was a little bit afraid and, as a result, kind of turned my back on it. You should embrace it because it's going to be a part of who you are, and it's going to be a part of what this business is about.
There are two things that create opportunities. One is being involved with something that makes money, and the other is winning awards. And the reason that winning the awards creates the opportunities is because it gives the people who are selling the picture the opportunity to make more money.
I wasn't going off to New York to be more famous than my father, but in retrospect, that certainly was driving me. He was famous in Philadelphia, but it was also really important to him to be famous. And to a certain extent, I got some of that, even though there were parts of it that horrified me.
Somebody with a billion followers can tweet, 'See my movie,' and it can still tank. Followers don't always translate into success because I think people are too savvy. When something takes off, it's because people are connecting to it - not because someone with a lot of followers says to care about it.
There's this American dream to put enough away that you can golf and build a birdhouse or just be in a Barcalounger watching football all day. I'll never be that guy. And I'm not really sure the people who have that are all that happy. Our desires as a man are to work, plow ahead, and overcome conflict.
I think of being an actor as kind of a young man's gig. It's emasculating, in a way, people messing with you and putting make-up on you and telling you when to wake up and when to go to sleep, holding your hand to cross the street. I can do it up to a certain point, and then I start to feel like a puppet.
I really believe that all of us have a lot of darkness in our souls. Anger, rage, fear, sadness. I don't think that's only reserved for people who have horrible upbringings. I think it really exists and is part of the human condition. I think in the course of your life you figure out ways to deal with that.
People work so hard, and I want to keep that energy up, and you can spread that if you're the actor. But I'm also not able to turn it on and off like a faucet. A lot of what I'm called upon to play is violent or angry. When I'm messing around with the crew and making jokes, I remember, 'Oh, this is the guy I normally am.'
I felt as if I was the brunt of some massive joke at my expense: Can you believe this loser can be connected to Marlon Brando and Katharine Hepburn? But through the years I have learned to tolerate and sometimes embrace the idea. People have asked me if I consider it an honour. Well, all it indicates is that I've been in a lot of movies with a lot of people. And besides that there are plenty of other actors that would work.
They took 3-D digital photographs of my entire body. I had to pose stark naked, assuming a kind of Spider-Man position. After a minute, one of the technicians pointed to my genitals and said, Um, we're not getting enough data there ... It wasn't what you think. It turns out that the fancy digital camera doesn't pick up dark areas too well, and they were having trouble because of the hair down there. I actually had to spray on this highlighter stuff. (On having digital photos taken for the invisible man role in the film Hollow Man)