“When you perform with a live audience, the audience comes back to you.”

It surprised me, the feeling I got when I won the Oscar for ‘Scent of a Woman.’ It was a new feeling. I’d never felt it.

I don’t understand the hatred and fear of gays and bisexuals and lesbians… it’s a concept I honestly cannot grasp.

We’re charlatans in a way, we’re magic people. Part of the behind the scenes stuff is to loosen you up, to make you feel that you are experiencing this. This is my style.

That was the first thing I was struck by, not by the acting, not by anything else, but by the physicality.

There are people whose sense of reality is very strong, who have a sense of honesty.

Sometimes you’re fighting corporations and forget that people can talk to each other.

Love is overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate

I personally think if you’re given four months instead of four weeks on a play, with the people who want to work that way.

All due respect, and trying to be as modest as I can be: I am a dancer.

All I am is what I’m going after.

You never open your mouth until you know what the shot is.

In America most everybody who’s Italian is half Italian. Except me. I’m all Italian. I’m mostly Sicilian, and I have a little bit of Neapolitan in me. You get your full dose with me.

If you have the opportunity to meet someone as an actor, it’s just great fodder for you. It’s wonderful source stuff that we die for.

When you do these things, you sort of take the journey. The journey is all about how I can interweave the Oscar Wilde story.

It was a way of escaping the responsibilty of what was happening.

You’re in a conversation and everybody’s agreeing with what you’re saying – even if you say something totally crazy. You need people who can tell you what you don’t want to hear.

If you are halfway smart, and you could really listen to the audience, you could really learn a lot.

Hong Kong film audiences are very quiet. It’s their culture.

I’d rather an audience like me than dislike me, but I’d rather they disliked me than be apathetic, because that is the kiss of death.

And lot of Asian audiences and reporters don’t like me to act as a bad guy. But I think I want to become an actor, I want to try different way.

The audience makes the decision of what kind of actor they want to watch. I always have said in the last 20 years, the real boss is the audience.

Very difficult to understand American audience, what they like, what they don’t like. Some movie I like very much, it doesn’t work. Some movie I don’t like, it gets big box office. Very difficult.

My philosophy is, it’s always very rewarding when you can make an audience laugh. I don’t mind making fun of myself. I like self-deprecating comedy. But I’d like you to laugh with me occasionally, too.

As long as I can do something that I am passionate about and that I can really enjoy and the audience can enjoy. That is where my enthusiasm comes from.