“Movie acting suits me because I only need to be good for ninety seconds at a time.”

The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe.

Religion is the worst enemy of mankind. No single war in the history of humanity has killed as many people as religion has.

When everything goes well. When sails rip, engines freeze up and you find there are organisms growing inside the diesel, it’s terrible and amazing stuff.

It’s hard to be an artist. It’s hard to be anything. It’s hard to be.

That’s sort of why I got into acting. I realized the more fun I had, the better I did it. And I thought, that’s a job I could be proud of. It’s changed my life learning that, and it’s made me better at what I do.

Somewhere there’s a score being kept, so you have an obligation to live life as well as you can, be as engaged as you can.

But I can only take so much TV, because there is so much advice. I find people will preach about virtually anything – your diet, how to live your life, how to improve your golf. The lot. I have always had a thing against the Mister Know-It-Alls.

I really don’t know what’s going to come out of my mouth.

You’ll never be good if you don’t know that you are.

You know…they say an elephant never forgets. What they don’t tell you is, you never forget an elephant.

Groundhog Day’ was one of the greatest scripts ever written. It didn’t even get nominated for an Academy Award.

There’s only a couple times when fame is ever helpful. Sometimes you can get into a restaurant where the kitchen is just closing.

I don’t answer fan mail. I don’t have time for that. It’s like hundreds of thousands of people who think they’re going to become millionaires getting autographs from movie actors. I don’t have time for those idiots. I’ve got stuff to do.

The atheists traditionally hold their conventions from Good Friday to Easter Sunday during the hours Christ spent in the grave.

I’d sort of gone through some sort of spiritual change in the late 70s where I sort of saw there was some other life to live. It changed the way that I worked just having a different presence and a different tension.

I think midlife crisis is just a point where people’s careers have reached some plateau and they have to reflect on their personal relationships.

My approach to acting is that I am totally intuitive. I read the script and I get it. If I don’t get it, I can’t do it.

Don’t think for a moment that I’m really like any of the characters I’ve played. I’m not. That’s why it’s called ‘acting’.

With any part you play, there is a certain amount of yourself in it. There has to be, otherwise it’s just not acting. It’s lying.

Leadership is a way of thinking, a way of acting and, most importantly, a way of communicating.

Acting is the only time when I truly maintain the spontaneity that I want to be present at all times.

I never plan to stop acting, I take it very seriously.

Life is like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

I suddenly think the job of acting is a difficult one. It’s not as flip, irrelevant, and shallow a calling as I thought it was in the Eighties.