“If you can identify with people, you can empathize with people and therefore you understand things.”

The problem with me is, I guess, the way I express myself, you have to be with me 50 years before you can get a sense of what I’m talking about.

I don’t think actors should ever expect to get a role, because the disappointment is too great.

Is it possible to do something that that makes an audience uncomfortable, challenges them, makes them see things they’re not used to?

Show me a bad script and I will show you a big payday.

Shakespeare is one of the reasons I’ve stayed an actor. Sometimes I spend full days doing Shakespeare by myself, just for the joy of reading it, saying those words.

I’ve often said there’s two kinds of actors. There’s a more gregarious type and the shy type.

There was a time in my life when being dishonest with women was the natural way to be. I finally said, “Hey, I have to stop this silliness.”

They made me feel pretty good. But it also did not make me feel bad NOT winning the Academy Award.

The truth is, you know, we need our anodynes. You know that word, anodynes? We need that in life some times.

Responsibilities are relative. My responsibility is to a character in a script, to a part I’m playing.

You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire; you build egos the size of cathedrals; fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse.

Did you know I started out as a stand-up comic? People don’t believe me when I tell them. That’s how I saw myself, in comedy.

I go all over the world, I have access to many things, many people, many places and it’s wonderful. But now I’m at a point where.

It’s not personal, it’s strictly business

Without coffee something’s missing

It’s never really that much fun for me to do movies anyway, because you – you know, you have to get up very early in the morning and you have to go in and you spend a lot of time waiting around.

My interest is always to get as deeply as I can into the minds and spirits of the characters and let the readers empathize or judge as they will.