When you know what an actor has, you can reach in and arouse it. If you don't know what he has, you don't know what the hell is going on.

Many times when you make a movie, it feels like your biggest mistake. But even if a film isn't a hit, you shouldn't view it as a mistake.

My dad became a soap opera actor, and I was an extra in a skating rink scene on the soap. I didn't audition. It was nepotism all the way.

You don't really have to dress a ton of actors. You don't really have to spend a bunch of money lining up extras to look the time period.

Seven actors have played Batman on the big screen, and if you can name all seven without reading any further, your youth has been wasted.

In a way, a lot of my work is in the re-writing once it is cast, as I adapt to the rhythms of how the roles are played out by the actors.

Fighting the wild branches of a haunted tree is not something that every actor is confident enough to attack, literally and figuratively.

Out of all the actors I have worked with, I love working with Larry Hagman the most. We were very close and it was just a wonderful time.

It's good to feel tired at the end of the day. It's not often as an actor that you're like, "Oof. Ow. I feel like I've been out working."

You hear about actors who were doing five years on a series as lovers and actually hated each other. I don't know if I could pull it off.

I'm just looking to be in the best movies possible and do the best work possible and try to become a better actor and make better movies.

Actors should shut up about politics. They tend to be ill-informed finger-pointers who just cosy up to some flavour of-the-month liberal.

I have never acted he has never been cast in a romantic lead or has been cast opposite a female love interest in any movie he starred in.

As you get older, you suffer fools less easily. That's why there's all those cranky character actors. I'm an exception. I'm a sweetheart.

As an actor for hire, my job is to do some pre-production work for myself. Then my job is to show up and give the best performance I can.

Every actor is riddled with insecurity, of course. But weirdly, I don't really find that I'd be daunted with taking on roles or anything.

We not only romanticize the future; we have also made it into a growth industry, a parlor game and a disaster movie all at the same time.

That's an amazing gift as an actor - to be able to say I have an audience in so many countries in the world and that people know my work.

A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be too respectful of the book. All you owe to the book is the spirit.

Acting, music, painting... it's very subjective. So what I might think is a great actor, you might think is not a very good actor at all.

Money isn't a major motivating force in my life. Nor is my profession. There are other things that I care more about than being an actor.

When the movie comes out, what anybody thinks of it doesn't really matter to me. I don't go to the wrap party. I don't go to the premiere.

Part of the reason of being an actor is you like playing other people's lives and exploring all the psychologies in that and the emotions.

I think every young actor in Los Angeles went up for that role. It was between Frankie Muniz and me, and he pulled out, so I got the role.

Actors, writers, directors - that triumvirate of creativity - we have to rely and trust each other to be able to get to the final product.

Well, I'm a character actor, and actually throughout my life I've... I have relatively speaking played few heroic leads, but I've done it.

Yeah, I know, any time you hear an actor say, 'I do music', you cringe. But I want to be gradual with my music. I want to earn my stripes.

Mystery makes movie stars! If you see someone on the cover of the weeklies all the time, why would you want to pay to see them in a movie?

Even when you're making a movie about life, death is a presence, and I guess it's part of my dramatic viewpoint. I'm not sure why exactly.

Not write, maybe develop. Direct, sure. As an actor, you work on so many films, you sort of start to see who directs well and who doesn't.

The best actors in the world are the actors who don't keep the walls up all the time and allow themselves the potential to be embarrassed.

It's a tiny industry. Actors all know each other to a point where you always know someone who knows the other person who worked with them.

It is important to make your own stuff. Even if you are not an actor, it is important to not stop involving yourself as a creative person.

[Marlon] Brando's a giant on every level. When he acts it's as if he landed from another planet. A planet where they produce great actors.

Whenever I'm looking for actors, I'm always looking for actors who are intelligent and who feel fresh and who feel authentic to the world.

The better the actor, the less you know about his life. I mean, nobody's better than De Niro and you don't know anything about him, right?

If you do a film with a studio, agents step in, they start saying, 'My actor has to get this amount of money', and it becomes about deals.

I was certainly a child of the '60s, and I came out of that era, and as a young actor, I got cast as a lot of counterculture hippie types.

In film, other actors' performances really are not your concern. If the other actor isn't giving you what you want, act as though he were.

Next year, if no one gives me any work, that's fine. I'm not going to do well anyway. I'm not an actor, I'm just exploiting this industry.

Certain actors wanna get paid, they think working in a low-budget movie is being ripped off. But for others it's like, 'Yes, let's do it.'

In that Freak Show environment, I got to spend time with so many of the actors who were part of that world. I just had the best time ever.

Actors are accustomed to doing exactly what the director or writer requests us to do, and rarely get involved in that part of the process.

The big reason why I became an actor in the first place was to communicate. I never acted in high school...I was desperate to communicate.

Although filmmaking is collaborative and involves trust, ultimately it is the director who holds the whole picture together in their head.

For me as an actor because I've been at it so long, it becomes much harder to watch movies because you really see the seams of everything.

Every actor you learn from, take something from everyone - big actor or not. Whether they're big movie stars or not doesn't really matter.

I have done film, television and theatre - all at a pretty substantial level - I don't think it's possible for American actors to do that.

As an actor, you really want to resonate with your audience. I played a character on Oz and people still approach me in the streets today.

I had this vivid image of myself at the age of 60 looking back on my life and truly regretting the fact that I hadn't tried to be an actor

Share This Page