“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.”

At one point he took the robes he was wearing and just started flipping them up in the air, out of nowhere. And later, an actor said to him.

My own celebrity, my own life. This is semi-autobiographical in terms of my commitment to this kind of thing.

I was shocked when I heard about Paul Newman retiring at age 82. Most actors just fade away like old soldiers.

There is no happiness. There is only concentration.

I was never very happy with performing; it didn’t turn me on much.

I found that speaking live to people, young people, about what I liked and what had been happening to me was very good for me.

I wanted to be a baseball player, naturally, but I wasn’t good enough.

Love goes through different stages. But it endures.

I hope the perception is that I’m an actor, I never intended to be a movie star.

We start to realize that there are anodynes in life that help us through the day.

I have a life and do a lot of things, and so far my work has been my life.

It’s easy to fool the eye but it’s hard to fool the heart.

I don’t like a lot of things like [Iraq], I never did. Being in a position of celebrity and having your words carry such unnatural weight…

I thought, what’s going on? Did some whale get washed up to shore? So I stood up on the table to see what it was, and it was the director.

I’ve always been a bit squeamish when it came to that kind of thing.

The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful – my personal life suffers.

Every relationship should eventually become a long-term relationship. Any director that I meet now isn’t just a director. He’s potentially a friend, and someone I can call to do a project that I want or that I have.

I’ve done auditions where the casting director is taking the paper out of my hand in the middle of reading.

The audience has always been my best director.

Ive never actually watched another director work.

Most directors have little lists in their heads of people they really want to work with.

A lot of directors prefer the solitude of the editing process, but I revel in the craziness of what a film set is.

Directors have a tendency to use their hands like orchestra conductors.

Actors aren’t stupid, mostly, and if there’s a sensibility and an aesthetic that a director’s going for, if you’re aware of that too, you can do things to help that.