“In the old days the studios guided your career. Now it’s all up to you.”

Stop your grinnin and drop your linen

Every professional athlete owes a debt of gratitude to the fans and management, and pays an installment every time he plays. He should never miss a payment.

Slow motion is so visually cinematic; when you create that, you create it for your audience, you let them have the feeling of what it must be like to be there. And in a movie, you can’t forget the audience.

Greatness isn’t something you should always be chasing. There’s greatness within all of us, and I think that’s what we forget.

I hate tests. It’s a really lousy way to judge a person’s ability.

Through readiness and discipline, we are the masters of our fate.

We mystify the art of moviemaking, but it’s not amystical science. You take a good screenplay, put a group togetherand you hammer it out.

A good filmmaker is someone who can look at a piece and go, “This camera’s really going to be a character. I want people to feel like they’re being punched.”

I’ve been fortunate in my career to have performed in revivals of great musicals and to have originated roles in musicals that have in turn been revived. And I’m not dead!

Don Knotts left [Andy Griffith Show] to pursue a movie career, so once he was gone I left too.

My voice had a long, nonstop career. It deserves to be put to bed with quiet and dignity, not yanked out every once in a while to see if it can still do what it used to do. It can’t.

In my career, there have been three things that were challenging: playing gay; playing a Jewish woman; and playing Anton Chekhov. The scariest part was playing Chekhov!

Don’t be afraid to ask people ‘why,’ ‘what if.’ Don’t be afraid to attack your career. Get in the game, don’t stay on the sidelines.

The failure of The Cable Guy impacted my career. I had to start writing and acting again.

I can see myself staying at Blackburn for the rest of my career – unless I move to another club at some stage

I have no particular career agenda.