“I know doing movies is where I need to be. That’s where my audience wants to see me.”

I want to do something that people can really say, ‘Hey, man, that was good, I’m proud of you, I’m proud of that.’ ‘Pride’ and ‘Transformers’ and things like that.

I’ve never been no superficial cat.

Comedy has been so good to me.

Whatever success I’ve had, I always like to top it.

I don’t care about how I look; I’m dedicated to the laughs. You know, I used to be a clown, so – my name was Smoothie the Clown. All the training I had, all my training is geared toward making people laugh, and I didn’t care about being cool.

Jerry Weintraub, the producer, might be a pain in the ass, but he really knows how to treat his actors.

I hate to compare anything, especially while I’m promoting. I feel that’s another disrespect, but ‘Ocean’s 13’ is the best movie I’ve ever done in my life. No question.

That’s the whole key to anything: Don’t be afraid to fail. And is not afraid to fail.

I hate to let people down. I was like that in sports and I was like that in comedy. I was like that at work. When I worked General Motors and stuff like that, when I say something, I mean it.

You don’t see me in Los Angeles a lot. I go back home. Because I can’t play the game. I can’t – my tolerance – I know I’m getting old; I’ll be 50 this year. And you know how I know I’m getting old? ‘Cause my tolerance level is low.

Only way you can you get upset is when you expecting something.

I can’t build myself by beating somebody down.

I love my daughter, but there’s a certain feeling, a certain emotion when you got a granddaughter, you know?

If I can tell someone a story that makes them bend over and laugh, that’s bigger than anything else.

The Bernie Mac Show’ is my life. It’s the truth, and I’m not ashamed of a minute, an hour, or a second of my life.

When I get a chance to play golf or go on a boat with good people, take the boat out and put some lobsters on the grill, get the ice-cold beer and the cigars – that’s heaven here on earth.

My favorite job is being a father. I have four girls now. They’re a captive audience.

It was great fun. We had gone on tour in between the sessions and reconnected with the audience and got a lot of energy back from them, a lot of positive energy.

I’d love to knock an audience cold with one note, but what do you do for the rest of the evening?

When I tried to branch out into comedy, I didn’t do very well at it, so I went back to doing what I do naturally well, or what the audience expects from me – action pictures.

Well, all the plays that I was trying to write were plays that would grab an audience by the throat and not release them, rather than presenting an emotion which you could observe and walk away from.

As a hero, you have to play it straight. The audience is going to live through you, so you have to be more neutral. They will be projecting their thoughts and their actions onto the main character.

I mean there’s still also an element of the audience looking for role models. In my day, when I started, if you were an action hero, you were a little bit of a role model like the person.

Cinema is changing every week, and multiplex audiences are demanding every week.