“I would like to do more dramas when I find a good role that will allow me to politely upset people’s expectations of me as a comic actor.”

People like to define you through what they’ve seen you do. There are aspects of my personality, I guess, that come through on-screen, but I don’t sit around thinking, ‘I’ve been a bumbling suitor all my life.’

As a kid I had dreams about being successful, thinking it would be cool. Then, when I was in my 20s, I really thought I had it much more figured out than I do now.

There’s always an element of fear that you need to work a lot until people get sick and tired of you or finally figure out that you’re a fraud after all!

I’m Jewish, but my mom’s Catholic, so the guilt area is covered. I have the highest expectations, along with the lowest. I tried to put as much of myself as possible in Reality Bites, but in terms of my humor, I’m still trying to figure out what my sensibility is. It’s a process, really.

I’m always willing to endure humiliation on behalf of my characters.

I know that I’m better as an actor when I’m working with a good actor. I think anytime you’re working with a better actor, it makes you a better actor.

Oh, you can milk just about anything with nipples.

Very quickly after meeting Dustin, the whole image I had of him was shattered.

All those rumors about her being underweight are trash. She’s [Calista Flockhart] gorgeous.

When we were visiting New York City, I took my kids to the same playground where I went growing up. It was fun to feel that connection of having gone there as a kid and being there as a parent.

I’m not an expert on the Malaysian sense of humor.

I’ve had a very good career and I’m grateful that the public has had some level of acceptance and appreciation of my work.

It’s what I wanted to do with my life. Not necessarily just direct Jim Carrey movies, but to direct and act and write and create and along the way discover what it is that I’m about.

I don’t play hockey at all. I’m not comfortable on skates.

I don’t think it’s ever easy to be funny. I find it easy to amuse myself with a certain sort of cynical dark humor that tends toward the meaner side, like my character in Happy Gilmore. Those kinds of characters come easily to me.

I don’t devalue comedy as compared to drama. Not one bit.

I first got into acting when I was about 12. I started doing speech and drama lessons. All my friends were doing it at the time and my dad encouraged it. He encouraged any extracurricular activity.

When I was growing up you would see big American films that really mythologised their landscape, that really showed the vastness and the drama of their country.

It made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life.

What reaches an audience is honesty. If you’re saying something truthful that’s supposed to be a funny line, it’s going to be funny. And if it’s supposed to be a serious line, it’s going to be serious. But, I don’t think there’s a distinction between how you play drama or comedy, if it’s based in the truth.

What allows us, as human beings, to psychologically survive life on earth, with all of its pain, drama, and challenges, is a sense of purpose and meaning

Nature in her whole drama never drew such a part; she has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man’s own making.

Their incompatible appearances have actually made them more compatible … Some people said that when a couple comes together … they will compliment each others shortcomings

Compare the cinema with theatre. Both are dramatic arts. Theatre brings actors before a public and every night during the season they re-enact the same drama.