“My parents were really encouraging. But I had to teach them the proper way you respond to an actor after seeing a play – regardless of whether you like their performance you tell them how great they are because they have to go on again the next night.”

One of the great tools we use in acting is the idea of immediacy, that the audience gets to see you witness something apparently for the first time, so you create a lot of tools to kind of trick yourself into making it appear something is happening for the first time.

When somebody on a professional scale says “you did it wrong,” it has a pretty intense impact. If you don’t have some kind of opposing force to say, “that’s all right, that’s their opinion,” or, “I may have screwed that one up but I’ll do better the next time,” then you’re screwed.

If I had done ‘Titanic,’ it would have made, probably, $200,000 – worldwide. So I think my life would have been very, very similar.

You’re giving the audience in real time something authentic from yourself. As an actor, my bullshit meter was going off like crazy at my first attempts to find my own rock star.

From here on out, I am only interested in what is real. Real people, real feelings, that’s it. That’s all I’m interested in.

I feel the film companies should pay for proper advertising to see that the movie will sell, instead of putting it on our backs.

I don’t want to expose the intricacies of my work so people can understand how I did it.

Interest in certain themes doesn’t mandate a personal stake or personal experience of those themes. I’ve killed people in plays, but no one asks me what it’s like to kill people.

A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories. They live on after him, and in that way he becomes immortal.

That’s what I always enjoyed about acting, the real adrenalin rush. My heart – still before I go on stage – crashing out of my chest. That’s thrilling to me.

I always end up taking people that are morally ambiguous.

I was really scared to stay home alone when I was kid, and I would freak out whenever there was a noise after my parents left.

I’m the kind of parent who asks my kids questions like, ‘What would be your ideal thing to do in the summer?’

I would always do the songs that I wanted to do and the songs that my parents wanted me to do.

You make your first album, you make some money, and you feel like you still have to show face, like ‘I still go to the projects.’ I’m like, why? Your job is to inspire people from your neighborhood to get out. You grew up there. What makes you think it’s so cool?

I think it’s very important to send the message that, while parents are needed to remind you to practice and occasionally force you to finish things… they also need to learn to respect you. You as an individual, ultimately, are the captain of where you’re going.

My message to little kids who aspire to be anything they want to be is to listen to their parents.

God blessed me with two unbelievable parents, and I am just like both of them. I have the smile and charisma of my mother and the big heart of my mom, because she wants to save the world and help the world, so I am just like her.

A good parent, a good neighbour, a good citizen, is not good because his specific goals are acceptable, but because his successive goals are ordered to a dependable and socially desirable set of values. (1947)