“I don’t think I’m like any of the characters I’ve played. They’re all really far from who I am.”

We were incredibly fortunate to get to make three Batman films. That’s enough. Let’s not get greedy. It’s a torch that should be handed from one actor to another. So I enjoy looking forward to what somebody else will come up with.

I like being responsible for myself.

I’ll find myself having dinner with people and someone will mention something and I will say I was in that situation once. Then I’ll say, forget it, it was a scene I was in. That can get to be quite confusing.

Well, it’s embarrassing to be a star.

It’s the actors who are prepared to make fools of themselves who are usually the ones who come to mean something to the audience.

I seek the means to fight injustice. To turn fear against those who prey on the fearful.

Being misunderstood is not a bad thing as an actor. I know the truth.

In everyday life, my wife is the most wonderful. We’re in love with each other beyond belief.

I like the idea of movies having a magic element. How many times have you seen an actor in a movie who you know only as the character? It’s wonderful, isn’t it?

It was a great honor to be called a mo-fo by Sam Jackson.

People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy and I can’t do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man I’m flesh and blood, I can be ignored, I can be destroyed, but as a symbol, as a symbol I can be incorruptible. I can be everlasting.

I don’t personally look to my own life experiences for answers about how to play a scene.

If you’re doing your job properly, you take the risk of feeling slightly foolish and delve in and bring out the emotions.

All of the muscles were gone, so that was a real tough time of rebuilding all of that. But you have a deadline, you have an obligation. You’ve said that you will commit to this part, and I just can’t live with myself for not really giving it as much as I can.

I’ve had some painful experiences in my life, but I feel like I’m trivializing them by using them for a scene in a movie. I don’t want to do that. It just makes me feel kind of dirty for having done that.

It’s very easy to leave when things go wrong, but to stick around and to basically give life to a town because of everything that it gave you generation after generation after generation, that to me is what defines a true American.

For me acting, comes straight from the heart. In that sense I don’t act at all. I think that to feel the character’s pain I have to be myself. Somewhere audiences see that.

Knowledge is essential to conquest; only according to our ignorance are we helpless. Thought creates character. Character can dominate conditions. Will creates circumstances and environment.

I am an actor, and I would like to reinvent myself through every character that I portray.

A family is a place where principles are hammered and honed on the anvil of everyday living.

You don’t get to be a jerk just because you’re skilled.

Your success stops where your character stops. You can never rise above the limitations of your character.

Communists are frustrated capitalists.

How well you treat the wicked people, they don’t give up their wickedness. They derive pleasure in hurting others. A serpent made to drink milk, it ejects poison only.