Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I did theatrical caricatures.
Jimmy Dean was my best friend.
God is a luxury I can't afford.
I played a wide variety of roles.
Ageism is something that does exist.
Pictures are packaged and cast by agents.
Great teachers are the ones who inspire you.
I've always been interested in science fiction
I've always been interested in science fiction.
I'm usually cast by people who are oddly goofy.
I don't think villains think they are villains.
And the 90% they are not is what I do for a living.
I don't know anybody who's any good who isn't nuts.
Everyone can walk and talk. Your job is to create magic.
Just five years before that the Russians were our allies
A good director makes a playground and allows you to play.
My mantra is 'stay perpendicular.' Horizontal is not as good.
How a character hides his feelings tells us something about him.
I look for roles where there is some kind of an arc to the story.
My technique has always been to include all the periphery around me.
I can take scripts directly to actors. Agents don't like to hear that.
People do not necessarily reveal what is going on - only bad actors do.
A lot of the bad guys I've played just haven't had much dimension to them.
In any age range, there are some limitations in terms of good, good parts.
It's better to live as your own man, than as a fool in someone else's dream.
I had hair down to my shoulders, a beard and mustache. I was crude and rude.
Nobody knew me. They just knew that I was the guy from 'Mission: Impossible.'
I've worked with a lot of wooden actors in my day, but Pinocchio is the best.
Years ago on TV, I played people like Doc Holliday and Jesse James on Westerns.
As a young actor, I was working much more readily and being offered more things.
The winners shouldn't necessarily win, and the losers shouldn't necessarily lose.
I'm not speaking, you know, egocentrically at all, but I do have a very wide range.
The real good comedians, like Chaplin, would make you laugh and a second later, cry
The real good comedians, like Chaplin, would make you laugh and a second later, cry.
No one tries to cry. You try not to cry. No one tries to laugh. You try not to laugh.
To really have craft, you must be able to repeat something as one has to do in films.
I was very thin, exceedingly thin. If you look at 'North By Northwest,' you'll get a clue.
If you don't trust yourself, you won't trust others. You make a choice and see where it goes.
I've turned down a lot of roles. Some of them made stars out of the people. I have no regrets.
Harry Dean Stanton, Anjelica Huston - a lot of people have studied with me. It's paying my dues.
Every young actor wants to do 'Hamlet' on the West End. Why? Because they can bring something to it.
The year I got into The Actors Studio, Steve McQueen and I were the only two accepted that whole year.
Bad actors try to cry, and good actors try not to. Bad actors try to laugh, and good actors try not to.
When someone is there for you, has your back, that's somebody to pay attention to because that's a friend.
For my generation of actors, it was about the theatre. Television didn't exist. Coaxial cable didn't exist.
They made a fatal mistake in doing 'Psycho' again. Why do that? Why revisit something that stands for itself?
I trained as an actor with Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan, and Harold Clurman, and those guys set a very high bar.
I like a character that is still alive and is necessarily thinking, and either grows or diminishes or whatever.
Life is a roller coaster. There are ups; there are downs. There are hills; there are valleys, peaks, and so on.
I try to never repeat a character. I always try to find something new and fresh and interesting that inspires me.