There's no socially acceptable middle age.

I can't stand to see myself act. It just makes me cringe.

I just have a respect for my audience. That seems to be pretty logical.

To stand there and do nothing on film is probably the hardest thing to do.

I still collect comics. I still have a great love and respect for the genre.

I want to make movies that I want to see, and what I miss and I'm not seeing.

My dad was an entrepreneurial businessman, and maybe I got some of his ability.

I loved 'Boogie Nights.' That was a great movie, and I had a lot of fun doing that.

I spent a lot of years just learning my craft and falling down in front of the camera.

It's not that the film is violent, it's that people have an issue with violence right now.

Television is kind of restrictive in its directing, but it would be nice to get some chops doing TV.

I do know that people tend to do their best work when they're challenged and stimulated by their peers.

You just have to go with a good story and a script that you like and people that you like to work with.

I'm interested in people that don't always do the right thing, its much more akin to what I know about life.

I'm a really huge fan of the old romantic comedies from the '30s and '40s... Huge fan. I love all that stuff.

Terry Malick offered me three parts in 'The Thin Red Line.' I was busy shooting other movies while he asked me the first two.

I don't like to stick to one formula. That gets boring. I get bored, so I want to try different ways of getting inside something.

A buddy of mine is doing a documentary on decisions, and they're not based on a ton of logic. It's mostly how you relate to them emotionally.

Most actors have a process that they can go through, that they rely on, or that they've discovered, and that can evolve from project to project.

If I have things my way, over the next few years, I'm going to be doing a lot more directing and a lot less acting. That will be fun for a while.

Conformity is painful. You know, it's too tight. Conformity leads to rebellion. So a desire for happiness is in direct conflict with a desire for freedom.

If I stay alert, then I can challenge myself, and by challenging myself, that helps me to stay alive and to hopefully take something away from the experience.

We're in the doing business, or acting business and creating business. We're not in the results business, so we don't have any control over what the result is.

Anything that has to do with noir and space, I'm gonna love. When you've got a noir-ish, pulpy detective in a science fiction show, I'm all in, in that regard.

Great directors turn in mediocre work and first-time directors turn in exceptional work. No matter how good a person can talk about what he wants, you never know.

I think all good drama is funny. All the best drama is ultimately very funny. Life is funny. You can't have any honest treatise on life without bumping into some humor.

When I was doing character films, I would always try to find something to subvert the standard. You know, to play them exactly for what they are. That's the fun for me.

To me, it's the kiss of death when you start winking at the audience as an actor. I just never liked it. I don't like it when we do monologues, looking into the character.

I think what makes us human is our interconnectedness among people. It's our ability to form and maintain relationships. It's the barometer by which we call ourselves human.

I think what makes us human - is our interconnectedness among people. It's our ability to form and maintain relationships. It's the barometer by which we call ourselves human.

Earlier on in my career I felt that I had to hide behind a lot of different masks, and showboat ways of performing. Now, that's a lie. The less I have to hide, the less I have to act.

Places where prostitution is legal, you find much better health care, fewer cases of disease and illegal abortions. There's really nothing to be gained by keeping prostitution illegal.

Creating a world in a sci-fi show is almost the whole battle. If you have a great story and you can create a great world, as far as the acting goes, it makes my job a whole lot easier.

Some of the supporting roles that I've done as an actor, I took them because I knew that I would get to watch some of the leading guys in the movies, and also I'd get to work with them.

Harrison Ford - one of my favorite actors - has a wonderful sense of character and depth and uniqueness to him, yet he's able to just deliver the lines without putting any English on it.

I'm interested in the impact my movies have on people and how it affects them, and what they like and what they don't like - and what they take away from it. What leaves an impression, you know?

Most of my career up until the last couple of years has basically been a training ground for me. Actors that came up in the '50s and '60s, they had the theater, and television was in its infancy.

We're in the doing business, or acting business and creating business. We're not in the results business, so we don't have any control over what the result is. My reward comes in the doing of it.

That's what I think is the neat thing about TV: how alive it is and how the writers respond to the stimulus that they're getting from the actual actors. Whereas a movie is more hermetically sealed.

People lose people, we lose things in our life as we're constantly growing and changing. That's what life is is change, and a lot of that is loss. It's what you gain from that loss that makes life.

Sharing the same vision for what's on the page is always a good idea. The director's job is to establish what that is and make sure that everyone sticks to it when it comes down to actually executing it.

I'll tell you what - it's not a choice until you're open enough to experience both male and female sexuality. Until you've tasted the food, you don't know whether you'll like it or not, as my mom always said.

Establishing what the vision is and being able to stick to it is the job, and everyone should be on the same page, going in. With that said, first-time director or not, you never know what you're going to get.

America is immature as a nation, and part of the reason why 'Hung' is a hit show is because it deals with that immature side of the male brain where we are kind of comparing ourselves to the rest of the world.

When I was a kid out here in L.A., I was homeless, I didn't have any money and I was living in my car. I wasn't averse to going down to Santa Monica Boulevard and letting a guy buy me a sandwich. Know what I mean?

I'm of the mind that life is a risk, every time you leave your house it's a risk, and I see no reason to go through life with my hands tied behind my back for any reason. I'd be foolish to let something stop me from doing what I love to do.

I'm of the mind that life is a risk. Every time you leave your house it's a risk, and I see no reason to go through life with my hands tied behind my back for any reason. I'd be foolish to let something stop me from doing what I love to do.

That's the great part about television: It's alive, and it changes and evolves with the way the characters evolve. Stuff that happens to you in your life when you're shooting a TV show, you have to be careful, because it might end up in the show.

I like to imagine that all the choices you make during the day that you're doing a particular scene are going to feed into the creation of that scene. It's not a movie-by-movie or a part-by-part basis. It's a day-by-day thing, and sometimes an hour-by-hour thing.

Great directors turn in mediocre work, and first-time directors turn in exceptional work. No matter how good a person can talk about what he wants, you never know. You just have to go with a good story and a script that you like and people that you like to work with.

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