“So that you and the audience are giving to each other, in a sense. It’s an extraordinary thing. It’s wild turf up there.”

There has been a lot of self-doubt and unwelcome events in my life.

The play will invariably be different and stronger, and much more fulfilling and richer on all counts. There’s no doubt in my mind about it.

Francis Ford Coppola did this early on. You tape a movie, like a radio show, and you have the narrator read all the stage directions.

I don’t like what’s going on in Iraq, naturally. I’m part of a large majority of people who don’t, but I do not know the whole story.

My dad was in the army. World War II. He got his college education from the army. After World War II he became an insurance salesman.

I can see [ talent or curiosity for acting] in my oldest daughter [Julia Marie Pacino]. I don’t know how long she’ll run away from it, but it’s there in her.

Opinions I have about anything are in my personal life.

A lot of acting is private time.

It used to worry me what people said about me. I’m learning not to worry as much.

Everything changes with age. The parts change with age, your feelings about them change, roles that I would’ve wanted to play 10 years ago, I don’t want to play now.

The camera can film my face but until it captures my soul, you don’t have a movie.

I do Shakespeare when I am feeling a certain way.

It wasn’t until I got older that I realized acting was something I could really do.

I did it in Looking for Richard, too. And I figure, if I can weave it into the actual play and get the audience interested, like the robes going up and down, they’ll pay attention long enough to consume it.

To be really obvious about something, if somebody straps an M1 on your shoulder and throws you in Iraq.

If I was a painter no one would question me about my age. I’m an artist, I hate saying that.

I think the perception of audiences that love folk and country is they’re perceived to be more closed-minded than they really are.

I’ve done only things I’ve liked, and I’m happy that others have liked them, too. I hope it keeps going that way. But l would never want to do films which please just one set of audience; they should connect with everyone.

The director is simply the audience. His job is to preside over accidents.

Youngsters are the most discerning audience. They want entertainment, they want issues.

The select group of people who do make realistic cinema, who do make cinema perhaps a little more acceptable to the Western audience, is a very small percentage.

I don’t want the national award… I seriously do not need any such thing. I would only want the audience to go and watch the film once and that will be more than enough for me. Once everybody should see the movie and say it is a good watch.

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.

I think if you’re talented and not desperate to do any film that comes your way, and are doing justice to all your roles, then you’re fine, because you can’t predict the rest. You also can’t predict the audience’s reaction.