“In other words, I wouldn’t like to be an actor if I could only be real. I like to get wild, behaviourally wild, and it’s crazy to think of any form where it’s just one way.”

Don’t ever give anybody your best advice, because they’re not going to follow it.

I can’t hit on women in public any more. I didn’t decide this; it just doesn’t feel right at my age.

The average celebrity meets, in one year, ten times the amount of people that the average person meets in his entire life.

My motto is more good times.

Frankly, I got into the movies because I like the movies a lot.

With my sunglasses on, I’m Jack Nicholson. Without them, I’m fat and 60.

It’s a slight stretch of the imagination but most people are alike in most ways so I’ve never had any trouble identifying with the character that I’m playing.

I don’t think many people have a very good understanding of leisure and the importance it plays in our lives.

There’s only two people in your life you should lie to… the police and your girlfriend.

A lot of people can’t remember things because they weren’t actually there to begin with – they don’t take it all in.

Well, a girlfriend once told me never to fight with anybody you don’t love.

Acting is everybody’s favorite second job.

Well, I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I haven’t been a rogue most of my life.

Played tennis for years. But you can’t improve at tennis after you’re 50. You get to be in your 40s, and suddenly you’re a doubles player.

Beer, it’s the best damn drink in the world.

Almost everybody’s happy to be a fool for love.

Any actor who tells you that they have become the people they play, unless they’re clearly diagnosed as a schizophrenic, is bullshitting you.

God is the poet; men are but the actors. The great dramas of earth were written in heaven.

I fell in love with theater there, and after graduation I moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting.

People imagine that actors are being offered everything and you are not. So things come in and sometimes there are things that I want and can’t get a meeting on, or go to a different actors.

Many casting directors won’t hire aspiring actors because you might be burning some chick’s headshot under the table so she doesn’t get the part.

All the big actors are now on TV, and all the big actors have come from TV. It’s a great platform.

I am the luckiest old broad on two feet if the truth were known. It’s – but it all goes back to ‘Mary Tyler Moore,’ ‘Golden Girls,’ all those – actors love to take the credit. We couldn’t do it without the writers.

Every actor is remembered for one particular film.