It's very painful for us to feel we deserve a life. That's the toughest thing. That we deserve to have a life. That can take a lifetime.
So, they had this 40-odd year friendship with each other and with Mr Harwood. So, when I came on it Albert, Tom and Maggie were in the cast. But then Albert wasn't up for it, so he had to withdraw.
Well, 45-odd years of doing it, so we all pile up the things we like about directors and the things we don't like about directors. And sometimes they're very similar.
Now, I'm simply working with people I want to work with. I just want to have good working experiences and let the dice fall where they may.
The truth is, I've made about 30 movies in 30 years, and I've been criticized for 30 years for not making more movies.
I'm sixty-eight, I cry every chance I can.
I'd like to thank my parents for not practicing birth control.
I like to mimic my grandkids. I'm trying to understand the intensity of fixation on a leaf. Kids don't need anything else in their life.
Euthanasia is legal in Hollywood. They just kill the film if it doesn't succeed immediately.
I love working, I'd be dead if I hadn't found myself as an actor I didn't have to be successful.
Next to that kid, we all look like onions.
I hope to God I don't win an Oscar tomorrow night. It would really depress me if I did. I really don't deserve it. It wasn't that important a part anyhow.
Humanity seized to exist when Israel was established.
We're all a little nit autistic.
Life is an occasion...rise to it.
Peter Pan, prepare to meet thy doom.
I wanted to find my limitations so I decided to do Shylock. And if I fail? I've never been afraid of that. I have other fears - doing bad work knowingly is the worst fear.
Look at the studio filled with glamorous merchandise. Fabulous and exciting bonus prizes. Thousands of dollars in cash. Over $150,000 just waiting to be won as we present our big bonanza of cash on Wheel Of Fortune.
I don't believe in hell. I believe in unemployment, but not hell.
I think right now television is the best that it’s ever been, and I think that it’s the worst that film has ever been.
The Academy Awards are obscene, dirty . . . no better than a beauty contest.
I stopped working a few years ago because I just lost a spark that I'd had before. I thought I'd just try writing, and maybe start directing, but I did it very quietly.
There's nothing that I love more than predawn. I'm with the dogs, I make coffee, and there's no one up.
Well first of all, it's hard to shoot a movie and break for a long time and then come back and do, in a sense, one of the biggest scenes that each character had.
It isn’t a big jump in the imagination to see yourself living alone like Mr Hoppy.
One of the things you can do as an actor, is compensate for the things you can't do in life.
That's what we're all looking for, the place where the work leads us.
I decided a long time ago but sometimes it takes you 40 years to get around to doing something - and that's the truthful answer.
Lightbulbs die, my sweet. I will depart.
There's a new medical crisis. Doctors are reporting that many men are having allergic reactions to latex condoms. They say they cause severe swelling. So what's the problem?
There is something unnatural about marriage. These two people are not going to be the same people in a few years. The trick is to live your own life while sharing the same space.
Poverty is not dated. Homeless people have looked the same since the thirteenth century. Go back to the times of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Look at photographs. It's amazing. The face on a homeless person is timeless.
The better you are as a parent, the richer the nest you've built, the more difficult it is for your kids to leave. So they have to invent things to dislike about you. And they're brilliant at it.
I lived below the official American poverty line until I was 31.
We need to band together as a unit every day, especially to conquer the strength of the AIDS virus.
But I would reinvent myself if I could. As a sexy leading man! We all would like that, but I don't know how to.
There's too many interesting women I have…not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed.
I think 'retirement' goes hand in hand with people who make a living by having a 'job.' I don't think we-the .00001 percent of the population who are so fortunate to love passionately what we do-consider it a 'job.
Canada is like a nice family living over a biker bar . . . They keep telling the downstairs neighbors to keep down the noise, people are trying to sleep.
If you can get out there and say I'm going to...I'm willing to fail at what I feel is right, that's it.
There's a rebirth that goes on with us continuously as human beings. I don't understand, personally, how you can be bored. I can understand how you can be depressed, but I just don't understand boredom.
Many actors want to play Hamlet and Macbeth. Ever since I became an actor, from the very beginning I just wanted to play a Shetland pony. I cannot explain why
If you're waiting for the job, you're dead.
37 seconds, well used, is a lifetime.
Life stinks, but that doesn't mean you don't enjoy it.
To have a successful marriage, a man must, on a fundamental level be scared shitless of his wife.
Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me... aren't you?
I love acting, and I`m not going to determine what I do based on what I fear other people might think. I do what I want to do.
I got into acting so that I could meet girls. Pretty girls came later. First, I wanted to start off with someone with two legs, who'd smile at me and look soft.
I knew I finally made it as a performer when I began hearing rumors that I was gay.
What makes divorce happen is that you can't be in the same space any more, for whatever reason - but the love stays. And that's the killer. That's where the vehemence and anger and rage comes from.
It's true what they say about failure. You don't learn from success.
I don't like the fact that I have to get older so fast, but I like the fact that I'm aging so well.
You spend so much of your life basing yourself on what you think other people think of you. Then you realise that maybe one of the purposes of life is not to care.
This is your life. Now go make it the one you've always wanted.
Depressed, anxious, sad, frightened? Yes. But I've never been bored.
I think there's always going to be some kind of bigotry or some kind of racism. There has to be, because people can't feel that they have any hero qualities unless there's someone beneath them.
Well this is aptly called a junket, for both of us. I have never been to a house of prostitution, but I understand that you get in more than seven minutes.
Well first of all, it's hard to shoot a movie and break for a long time and then come back and do, in a sense, one of the biggest scenes that each character had.
Somehow I think it was declared very early on that I was the - if not the black sheep of the family, not a very good student.
I think the most insulting thing you can do to a director is to challenge when he or she is satisfied with your interpretation.
I did some writing and bought a book, and have been working on that as a film to act and direct in.
And that's another reason to make this movie: We can put plays on film now, at a relatively small cost, and they will reach an audience they would never have reached otherwise.
If you have this enormous talent, it's got you by the balls, it's a demon. You can't be a family man and a husband and a caring person and be that animal. Dickens wasn't that nice a guy.
One thing about being successful is that I stopped being afraid of dying. Once you're a star you're dead already. You're embalmed.
In my room as a kid... I'd play a fighter and get knocked to the floor and come back to win.
For me as an American, the most painful aspect of this is that I believe that that administration has taken the events of 9/11 and has manipulated the grief of the country and I think that's reprehensible.
Life stinks, but that doesn't mean you don't enjoy it.
I feel cheated never being able to know what it's like to get pregnant, carry a child and breast feed.
I decided to become an actor because I was failing in school and I needed the credits.
Myth is supposed to bring us together, but fantasy alienates us.
If there is no direct threat why are we invading?
Blame is for God and small children.
I did a movie called Marathon Man and it was one of my best memories.
There's a rebirth that goes on with us continuously as human beings. I don't understand, personally, how you can be bored. I can understand how you can be depressed, but I just don't understand boredom.
I envy people who can just look at a sunset. I wonder how you can shoot it. There is nothing more grotesque to me than a vacation.
I believe - though I may be wrong, because I'm no expert - that this war is about what most wars are about: hegemony, money, power and oil.
A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.
The two basic items necessary to sustain life are sunshine and coconut milk.
I wanted to be a jazz pianist, but I wasn't good enough. I got into city college because I didn't have the grades to get into university. I took acting because it was a way to get three credits. I just needed three credits and my friend told me to take acting because it was like gym - nobody fails you. I took it and that's literally how I got involved in acting.
Acting didn't solve much! If it did, I would have ended up much less crazy than I am today, but I'm not. At least for me, acting is a relief - a relief to be able to admit certain things about myself and disguise in my work, in my characters.
The plight of the actor, even if he's a star, is the plight of the women's movement. They're saying the same thing to us: get into bed, give me a good time, then give me something to eat, go get the laundry, be a good girl.
My wife always says that I will be stuck with this forever: I am the difficult one. With Jack Nicholson they always said it was drugs. Warren Beatty is supposed to have screwed everything that jumped off the curve. I'll tell you, in reality a few of us had as many girls as Warren.
Usually, those people don't even like actors and they can't wait until they get in the cutting room. They kind of break down in categories: directors who like to be surprised and some of them abhor being surprised. As far as directing, we all direct when we're acting in movies... every single one of us.
Money is another pressure. I'm not complaining, I'm just saying that there's a certain luxury in having no money. I spent ten years in New York not having it, not worrying about it. Suddenly you have it, then you worry, where is it going? Am I doing the right thing with it?
People like Johnny Depp are an exception. He is the current model of what an actor should be. His body of work speaks volumes. He was so under-rated for so long, but he will have longevity - and it is such a gratifying thrill to see he is finally getting the recognition he deserves.
In terms of the stars, the only ones I cast were Billy Connolly and Pauline Collins. I was in Los Angeles working and a lot of this took place on the telephone. I'd met Maggie [Smith] once and I'd come back-stage, which I'm usually loathe to do because as an actor you don't want people coming back because you want to get home [laughs].
So when I told my parents I wanted to go into acting because I was flunking out of my first year of junior college, they were relieved that I had picked something other than joining the army. But I can't imagine how they had high hopes for me.
We all believe what we read. I read how Tom Cruise and I were two big egos holding up shooting. I know that isn't true - but if I wasn't making a movie with him and I just picked up the paper, I'd believe it. That's interesting, isn't it?
