“I was quite overtaken by success and fame. I was one of those types who responded to it in a negative way. It was not easy.”

When I was a younger actor, I would try to keep it serious all day. But I have found, later on, that the lighter I am about things when I’m going to do a big scene that’s dramatic and takes a lot out of you, the better off I am when I come to it.

At this point in my career, I don’t have to deal with audition rejections. So I get my rejection from other things.

Great directors can understand the staging in such a way that can make a scene come alive. Others have a certain way of pacing the scene.

Vanity is my favourite sin.

I was playing a part of someone dealing dope on a street corner – and there was a guy actually dealing heroin right there. I looked at him, he looked at me, and I got real confused.

I’ve had very deep relationships that lasted for long periods of time with people.

My best advice to any young person is, if you want kids, be careful who you have them with. That’s my mantra.

I’ve always been in the theater. I’ve always gone to it. That’s been my way to cope.

The difference between the actor and the painter is that the actor would buy somebody a knish in order to have them watch him act.

On any given Sunday you’re gonna win or you’re gonna lose. The point is — can you win or lose like a man?

They say we die twice – once when the last breath leaves our body and once when the last person we know says our name.

I always had this thing, when I was younger especially, I didn’t want to do movies that much.

Anybody who cares about what he does takes risks.

I destroy it because it’s no longer coming from my unconscious.

The hardest thing about being famous is that people are always nice to you.

[Oscar Wilde’s Salome screenplay] is not autobiographical in a sense where you go to my house and see my kids and stuff like that, but that’s why I guess it’s semi-autobiographical.

It’s easier to ask for money from the poor than from the wealthy.

Real love isn’t complicated. It’s easy. It’s comfortable, It’s warm. It feels like home.

On my first days here I did not start work immediately but, as planned, I took it easy for a few days – flicked through books, studied Japanese art a little.

All too often it’s the very bravest of hearts, that break so easily.

The happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear their burden in silence. Without this silence, happiness would be impossible.

Silence is terrible and painful only to those who have said all and have nothing more to speak of; but to those who never had anything to say— to them silence is simple and easy.

It’s not easy to be a martyr in the field of race relations.

It is easy to be a philosopher in academia, but it is very difficult to be a philosopher in life.