Background Image

...

Believe It Or Not, I Supported Richard Nixon On The Issue Of Presidential Privilege. How Could Anyone Conceive Of Being The President Of The United States And Think That Every Single Thing That You Say Or Do Can Become A Part Of The Public Record? It Just Seems So Stupid To Me.

-Jack Nicholson

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Believe It Or Not,

Jack Nicholson

...

Believe It Or Not, I Supported Richard Nixon On The Issue Of Presidential Privilege. How Could Anyone Conceive Of Being The President Of The United States And Think That Every Single Thing That You Say Or Do Can Become A Part Of The Public Record? It Just Seems So Stupid To Me.

Views: 5

Topic

More From Jack Nicholson

If Men Are Honest, Everything They Do And Everywhere They Go Is For A Chance To See Women.

Kids Are Life's Only Guaranteed, Bona Fide Upside Surprise.

I Would Never Want To Vilify Somebody Who Considered Abortion Murder. I Was An Illegitimate Child Myself. I May Not Have Existed Today.

I Don't Play Golf Competitively. I Tell Everybody That I Cheat So They Won't Gamble With Me. That's Why You Can't Watch Football. Everybody's Gambling. They Don't Want To Watch The Game; They Watch The Spread.

Having Kids Is The Most Innately Positive Thing That Anyone Can Do.

Just Because You're Perfectionist Doesn't Mean You're Perfect.

When They Say I'm A Great Actor, I Close My Ears Because It's Not Good For You To Think That Way.

I Think The Greeks Invented Sports As An Antidote To Philosophy. In Sports There Are Absolute Rules. It's Not, What About This? What About That? Either You're Safe Or You're Out. It's Ten Yards Or It's Not. It's In The Hoop Or Out Of The Hoop. It's Certain.

I Did Not Want To Be Coming Off The Stage At The Mercy Of What Somebody Else Told Me I Did.

I Was Invited To Join The Mgm Cartoon Department. But If I'd Started Work In Animation I'd Have Had To Take A Cut In Salary, So I Didn't.

Children Give Your Life A Resonance That It Can't Have Without Them.

I Just Know That Sameness, Repetition, And Conceptualizing Are The Acting Craft's Adversaries, And It Seems More Intelligent To Start Off Within A Framework Where Those Things Are, To Some Degree, Taken Out Of Your Hands.

As An Actor, I Want To Give In To The Collaboration With The Director Because I Don't Want My Work To Be All The Same. The More This Can Be Done With Comfort, The More Variety My Work Has Had.

Even In The Most Sophisticated Person, It Is The Primitive Eye That Watches The Film.

I'll Tell You One Thing: Don't Ever Give Anybody Your Best Advice, Because They're Not Going To Follow It.

If You Get An Impulse In A Scene, No Matter How Wrong It Seems, Follow The Impulse. It Might Be Something And If It Ain't - Take Two!

I Am A Person Who Is Trained To Look Other People In The Eye.

Before I Moved Into The Mainstream Of American Movies, I Wrote A Script As An Experiment. I Wanted To Get Very Far Away From The Clichés About The Three-act Play - Structure, Development.

I'm Not A Power Person. I Like Everyone To Be On An Equal Footing.

If You Want Your Freedom, You Have To Be Willing To Work Hard To Exercise It.

I Like To Not Care That Much About Criticism, But I Do Care About It.

I Love Working With Women Directors. They Don't Mind Making You Cute.

Frankly, I Got Into The Movies Because I Like The Movies A Lot.

You Can't Say, "i'm Gonna Make A Hit Movie." You're As Dead As You Could Be.

[on The Birth Of His Son After Having Had Two Daughters] I Finally Got It Right.

Life Doesn't Have To Be About Finding Osama Bin Laden Or Becoming The President Of The United States. Life Is About The Little Things, Which Is One Of The Things You Learn When You Get Older.

There Are Short Parts That I As An Actor Am Very Right For. Or I Just Like The Part. Or You Need Someone Like Me For The Movie. By That I Don't Mean At The Box Office, I Mean In The Execution Of The Material.

Decent People Shouldn't Live Here. They'd Be Happier Some Place Else.

I'm Fairly Well Off. I Can't Poor-mouth That Away From People's Sensibilities About Me, Which Is Something I Worry About As An Actor. But It Would Be Real Stupid Of Me To Do Something For The Money.

A Lot Of People In The Middle Of Their Lives Have A Secret Yearning For More Romance.

Early On, If I Was Alone Two Three Nights In A Row, I'd Start Writing Poems About Suicide.

Dissembling Is A Common Tool Of The Anger Junkie.

Once I Got Started Acting I Loved It.

If You Think You’re Attractive, You’re Always Attractive.

I Never Thought In Terms Of Typing Myself, Because I Wasn't That Successful. After An Actor Has Done A Few Pieces Of Work, His Naïveté Is The Part Of The Craft He Has To Nurture Most.

The Stage Has A Certain Discipline. But The Ultimate Standard Is More Exacting In Film, Because You Have To See Yourself And You Are Your Own Toughest Critic.

I Resist All Established Beliefs. My Religion Basically Is To Be Immediate, To Live In The Now.

Live In The Now

I Don't Know If This Is A True Statistic, But I Heard Somewhere That There Are Three Times As Many Single Women Over Forty As Single Men. That's What We Got From The Women's Movement. The Chickens Have Come Home To Roost.

I Guess This Proves There Are As Many Nuts In The Academy As Anywhere Else.

Now Comes The Part Where I Relieve You, The Little People, Of The Burden Of Your Failed And Useless Lives. But Remember, As My Plastic Surgeon Always Said: If You Gotta Go, Go With A Smile.

I Suppose I Can Do More For A Script As An Actor Than As A Writer - In The Film Sense.

The Less People Know About Me, The Easier My Job Is.

I Know I Can Act. There Aren't Too Many Other Jobs I Know How To Do

I'm Not Hard To Get Along With.

Time Keeps No Measure When True Friends Are Parted, No Record Day By Day; The Sands Move Not For Those Who, Loyal-hearted, Friendship's Firm Laws Obey.

With My Sunglasses On, I'm Jack Nicholson. Without Them, I'm Fat And 60.

Always Try In Interviews To Avoid The Cliches About The Problems Of Public Life.

I Think It's Good If A Man Gives A Woman Some Time To Herself Because I Think We All Need That And We Can All Benefit From That. It Doesn't Imply A Rejection Of The Other Person, Just A Sense That Because We Do Have Our Separate Identities, Sometimes You Have To Be Less Involved In Another Person's Life Or Need To Have That Other Person Be Less Involved In Your Life.

I Have To Keep Myself In Check When I Go To The Kids' Sports Events. I Sit Waaay In The Back. I Make Sure I Don't Do Too Much Cheering, You Know What I Mean? I'm Still Not Quite Adjusted To This Modern School Of Thought: Oh, It Doesn't Matter Who Wins. I'm Not All The Way There Yet, But I Accept It From The Back Row.

Through All Permutations And Youthful Poetry, I Came To Believe That The Film Actor Was The Great "literateur" Of His Time.

For A Long Time, I Was Afraid To Be Alone. I Had To Learn How To Be Alone. And There Are Still Times When I Think, Uh-oh! I Gotta Talk To Somebody Here Or I'm Gonna Go Crazy! But I Like To Be Alone. Now I Do. I Really Do. There's A Big Luxury In Solitude.

I Would Never Say, "i'm Retired." I Believe If I Decided To Just Not Work, In Six Months Everybody Would Just Forget Whether You Were Working Or Not.

I've Always Fought Against Being Controlled And Manipulated And Stomped Upon By Circumstances.

I'm A New Wave Baby, So I Got Very Stimulated By Foreign Film.

The First Role I Ever Played I Had The Lead And It's Pretty Much Stayed That Way, Though People Take Great Relish In Calling Me A Character Actor, Which I Am. There Are A Lot Of Short Parts I Could Play, But I Only Do Them When They Are Like This ("a Few Good Men"), Central To The Idea Of The Movie.

I'm Such A Perfectionist. I Always Feel Overpraised Or Whatever. In The Abstract, I Know I'm A Good Person, A Good Professional. But It's Nice To Be Noticed A Little Bit, Ain't It?

I Love Discourse. I'm Dying To Have My Mind Changed. I'm Probably The Only Liberal Who Read Treason, By Ann Coulter. I Want To Know, You Understand? I Like Listening To Everybody. This To Me Is The Elixir Of Life.

I've Always Had Lots Of Friends Who Share My Perspective - I Guess You Could Say That I'm A Guy Who Aggressively Pursues His Happiness.

Lots Of Friends

I Love Writing, But I Stopped Because I Felt I Was More Effective Approaching Filmmaking From A Different Vantage Point.

The Minute That You're Not Learning I Believe You're Dead.

I Usually Don't Get Too Bogged Down With My Personal Problems Because That's A One-way Street If You Get Yourself Into A Negative Frame Of Mind And Only See The Dark Side Of Life.

I Think Of A Man And I Take Away Reason And Accountability.

Once You've Started A Film You Don't Become A Wet Noodle. You Must Have That Conflictual Interface Because You Don't Know, And They Don't Know. It's Through Conflict That You Come Out With Something That Might Be Different, Better Than Either Of You Thought To Begin With.

And This, Incidentally, Is My Thumbnail Sketch Of American Marriage: A Woman Sees A Man; She Likes Him. Now She Jumps On This Thing And Rides It To Some Kind Of Standstill. Then She Changes It And Trains It, And To The Exact Degree That She's Able To Do This, She Disrespects Him.

How Would I Like To Be Seen? Very Endearing, Charming, Intelligent, Handsome.

I've Always Thought Basketball Was The Best Sport, Although It Wasn't The Sport I Was Best At. It Was Just The Most Fun To Watch.

Everybody's Old Enough For A Beer, Ain't That Right, Mule?

Comedy Is More Difficult. You Can Look At Scenes When You're Doing A Drama Like, maybe It Works, But In Comedy, When You're Doing It, Either It Works Or It Doesn't. You Have To Keep Doing It Until It Does, And The Requirement Is More.

Charlize Theron And Cate Blanchett Are Very Good Actresses.

As A Means Of Supporting Experiential Element In Film, Once I Begin To Work On A Particular Movie I Consider Myself To Be The Tool Of The Director.

Well, A Younger Woman Is A Type, But Not Necessarily A Type For Me. And What Is A Younger Woman? I Mean, I'm Pretty Old. Almost Everyone Is Younger.

If It Is Difficult To Know Yourself As An Individual, It Seems To Be More Complex As A Couple. So If You Say, "oh I Like A Person Who Is Like This And That," You Might Take Away The Possibility Of Seeing The Only One That Might Be Right For You.

I Was Particularly Proud Of My Performance As The Joker. I Considered It A Piece Of Pop Art.

Most Of The Early Part Of An Actor's Career, You Do The Jobs You Get.

A Lot Of People Manage To Find Common Ground And Not Let Disagreements Or Tensions Build Up And Destroy Them, And Other People Break Up Or Get Divorced. I Don't Think Anything Is Ever Going To Change That Situation. You Simply Try To Find An Accommodation And An Understanding With Another Person And Work From There.

Women Are Sort Of Like Motorcycle Gangs With Me. They Get Really Shy And Polite. I Don't Know Why.

Motorcycle Gangs

I Believe In Making All Movies At Their Most Reasonable. That I Get A Lot Of Money As An Actor Is Because Nobody Else Will Get It If I Don't.

I Didn't Know That My Sister Was Really My Mother Until I Was Thirty-seven Years Old. But Life Has Taught Me That There Have Been A Lot Of Things That I Didn't Know.

The Blues And Jazz Will Live Forever... So Will The Delta And The Big Easy.

I Am A Person Who Is Trained To Look Other People In The Eye. But I Can't Look Into The Eyes Of Everyone Who Wants To Look Into Mine; I Can't Emotionally Cope With That Kind Of Volume. Sunglasses Are Part Of My Armor.

Men Dominate Because Of Physicality, And Thus They Have Mercy Where Women Do Not.

I Love Women Who Have A Strong Sense Of Themselves Because I Know I Have A Pretty Good Idea Of What I Want Out Of Life And I Like To Be Around Other People Who Are Also Pretty Secure. It Just Makes Things Easier.

I'm The Last Guy In The World To Feel Overlooked By The Academy.

Once You've Been Really Bad In A Movie, There's A Certain Kind Of Fearlessness You Develop.

I Would Never Complain About My Life, Even Though I Really Would Like To Have A Mate.

I Do Pray. I Pray To Something...up There. I Have A God Sense. It's Not Religious So Much As Superstitious. It's Part Of Being Human, I Guess.

I Don't Think Many People Have A Very Good Understanding Of Leisure And The Importance It Plays In Our Lives.

There Are Major Influences On Us That People Are Not Aware Of. There Are Big Lies That Nobody's Willing To Discuss.

I've Always Understood Money; It's Not A Big Mystical Thing To Me.

I'm Very Fortunate In The Sense That Outside Of Cohabitating Relationships And So Forth, I've Always Got On Just As Well With Women.

It's Not Like I'm Starved For Company - I Have A Few Very Good Lady Friends - But There's Only A Certain Amount Of Times A Woman Wants To See You And Never Go Out For Dinner.

Being Pigeonholed Is The Death Of All Actors.

I'm Content With The Fact That I Made A Decent Effort. That's What I've Always Worried About: That I Wouldn't Try Hard Enough.

It's Very Easy To Go Down, So Always Live Up. Incline Yourself Upward.

If You're Going To Write, Write One Poem All Your Life, Let Nobody Read It, And Then Burn It. This Is Very Young Thinking, I Confess, But It Is The Seminal Part Of My Life.

We Learn How To Kiss, Or To Drink, Talk To Our Buddies-all The Things That You Can't Really Teach In Social Studies Or History-we All Learn Them At The Movies.

There Was A Period When I Just Wanted To Make What I Wanted To Make And I Didn't Care What Lie I Had To Tell.

Everyone Pretty Much Acknowledges That He's The Man, And I Still Feel That Underrates Him.

I Have Given A Name To My Pain, And It Is Batman.

I Can't Hit On Women In Public Any More. I Didn't Decide This; It Just Doesn't Feel Right At My Age.

There Has Long Been A Bemoaning Of The Lack Of Opportunity To Make Films That Are Anything But Explosions Or The Ladling On The Pea Soup Or Whatever You Want To Call It. You Can Hardly Make A Movie Today Where Somebody Isn't A Murderer Or A Rapist Or, If It's A "fried Green Tomatoes" That Isn't Some Wistful Thing On This, That Or The Other Thing.

I Know I Can Act. There Aren't Too Many Other Jobs I Know How To Do. Financially, I've Lost Money And Made Money, But I Know My Way Around Financially. I've Been Too Many Places. I'm Like The Bad Penny.

I'm A Scamp. I Don't Deny It. I Like Myself.

I Mean, It's Real Hard To Be Free When You Are Bought And Sold In The Marketplace. Of Course, Don't Ever Tell Anybody That They're Not Free, 'cause Then They're Gonna Get Real Busy Killin' And Maimin' To Prove To You That They Are. Oh Yeah, They're Gonna Talk To You And Talk To You And Talk To You About Individual Freedom. But They See A Free Individual, It's Gonna Scare 'em.

Because You Know, Down Deep In My Heart, When All Is Said And Done, I Still Live Under The Illusion That Basically People Think Of Me As An Up-and-coming Young Actor.

If I Go Into A Restaurant There's A Very Good Chance That I'm Going To Spend My Time Being The Mayor. If I Want To Have A Good Time, I'm Happier Having Dinner Here.

The Camera Photographs What's There.

I'm Irish. I Think About Death All The Time.

Ireland And The Irish

A Man Needs A Private Life. With No Ability To Have A Private Life, One Thing Leads To Another, And Before You Know It We Have Bill And Monica. We Need To Get Real About Things. Humans Are Humans. Why Should We Expect More?

Beer, It's The Best Damn Drink In The World.

In My Last Year Of School, I Was Voted Class Optimist And Class Pessimist. Looking Back, I Realize I Was Only Half Right.

There Is One Thing I Know About Creative Conflict: Once My Argument Is Exhausted, I Am Not Going To Be Unhappy Whether It Moves In My Direction Or Away.

I Used To Be Very Quick, I Would Be Able To Leave The Room And Be Back Before You Noticed. When You Can't Do That Anymore You Need To Change The Style Of How You Do Things. But I'm Very Interested In Life And You Don't Want To Lose That.

At 55 I Said The Probability Is I Won't Have Another Relationship. I Just Didn't Want To Start Another Family. Between My Own Bizarre Criteria And Taste And The Fact That I'm Not Available For Many Things I Thought It Was Unlikely. Once You Know The Science About It, I Don't Think Anybody Should Consider Being Committed To A Real Eternal Relationship Until You're Through Something Called The Infatuation Circle.

What's Beautiful Is All That Counts, Pal. That's All That Counts.

When You Look At Life Retrospectively You Rarely Regret Anything That You Did, But You Might Regret Things That You Didn't Do.

Human Beings Are Always Going To Find Interesting Ways Of Making A Mess Of Their Lives. It's Human Nature.

Age Is The First Limitation On Roles That I've Ever Had To Encounter, And I Hit That Awhile Ago.

I'm Certainly Not As Tough As People Think. I'm Not A Fighter And So Forth. I'd Just As Soon Go Home.

There Were Points In My Life Where I Felt Oddly Irresistible To Women. I'm Not In That State Now And That Makes Me Sad.

I Have Never Lied To You, I Have Always Told You Some Version Of The Truth.

You Make Me Want To Be A Better Man.

Staying Together Is A Challenge. We All Have To Accept Qualities In Other People That Aren't Always Exactly What We Want Or Need.

I Look For A Director With A Script He Likes A Lot, But I'm Probably After The Directors More Than Anything.

I Respect The Social Graces Enormously. How To Pass The Food. Don't Yell From One Room To Another. Don't Go Through A Closed Door Without A Knock. Open The Doors For The Ladies. All These Millions Of Simple Household Behaviors Make For A Better Life. We Can't Live In Constant Rebellion Against Our Parents - It's Just Silly. I'm Very Well Mannered. It's Not An Abstract Thing. It's A Shared Language Of Expectations.

If I Were An Arab-american, I Would Insist On Being Profiled. This Is Not The Time For Civil Rights. There Are Larger Issues For Americans.

I'd Give My Goddamned Soul For Just A Glass Of Beer.

I Goddamn Near Lost My Nose. And I Like It. I Like Breathing Through It.

Hiding Something

I Don't Want To Direct A Movie As Good As Antonioni, Or Kubrick, Or Polanski, Or Whoever. I Want It To Be My Own. I Think I've Got The Seed Of It And, What's More, That I Can Make Movies That Are Different And Informed By My Taste.

We Are Going As Fast As We Can As Soon As We Can. We're In A Race Against Time, Until We Run Out Of Money.

Race Against Time

When I Was In High School, I Earned The Pimple Award And Every Other Gross-out Award.

I Don't Remember If I've Been Asked Seriously To Direct A Picture. I Understand That. I'm Very Good Business For People As An Actor And Perhaps They'd Rather I Didn't.

When I Am Cast In A Movie Where I Feel That The Woman's Part Is More Interesting, I Usually Start Thinking About Spencer Tracy And Fred Astaire. They Seem To Be The Most Clear Actors When Working With Women.

I Used To Think That One Of The Great Signs Of Security Was The Ability To Just Walk Away.

For An Actor, Style Comes Last. You First Have To Implement The Whole Thing, But Your Style Comes From The Subconscious, Which Is The Best Part An Actor Brings To His Work.

I Don't Want People To Know What I'm Actually Like. It's Not Good For An Actor.

Million Bucks Won't See You Through A Major Health Crisis.

You Can Follow The Action, Which Gets You Good Pictures. You Can Follow Your Instincts, Which Will Probably Get You In Trouble. Or, You Can Follow The Money, Which Nine Times Out Of Ten Will Get You Closer To The Truth.

No Issue Is More Compelling Than The Air We Breathe, Be It Hot Or Cold, Be It Hawk Or Human.

I Think Human Beings Have A Basic Instinct To Be Free And Explore Their World In Their Own Way. I've Always Been Driven To Look At Life As Something Which We Should Try To Plunge Into Rather Than Sit Back. You Have To Be Able To Have Fun And Keep Creating A Sense Of Excitement To How You Approach The World.

A Star On A Movie Set Is Like A Time Bomb. That Bomb Has Got To Be Defused So People Can Approach It Without Fear.

The Way I Reacted To 9/11 Was I Decided I Didn't Want To Do Any Movies That Are Sad Or Critical. I Decided I Didn't Want To Make My Living Depressing People Or Making Them Go Home Sick, So I Just Decided I Wanted To Do Comedy For A While And Study It For A While. It Doesn't Mean Everybody Should Do That, But That Was My Reaction.

There Are Many Directors In The Middle Range Who've Made Mostly Successful Pictures, And Then There Are A Few Great Directors Who've Had Some Successes And Some Failures. I Suppose My Life Would Be Smoother If I Wasn't Almost Totally Enamored Of The Latter Category.

You Can't Handle The Truth!

I'm In The Movie Business; It's Meant To Be Very Cutthroat. But You Won't Find Anybody That Ever Says I Cheated Them Or Manipulated Them.

My Whole Career Strategy Has Been To Build A Base So That I Could Take The Roles I Want To Play. I'd Hate To Think That A Shorter Part Might Not Be Available Because I Was Worried About My Billing.

When You Use A Dialect, You Worry That The People You're Imitating Will Think You're Making Fun Of Them.

You Can Call Me Joker. And As You Can See, I'm A Lot Happier.

Just Let The Wardrobe Do The Acting.

I Think The Greeks Invented Sports As An Antidote To Philosophy.

My Only Emotion Is Gratitude, Literally, For My Life.

Liberalism Is The Right To Question Without Being Called A Heretic. That's What America Did For The World.

There's A Period Just Before You Start A Movie When You Start Thinking, I Don't Know What In The World I'm Going To Do. It's Free-floating Anxiety. In My Case, Though, This Is Over By Lunch The First Day Of Shooting.

Ok, The Director Makes The Movie. But Some Movies Can't Get Made Without Someone Like Me In Them.

I Only Take Viagra When I'm With More Than One Woman.

I've Never Been Able To Say I've Been Influenced By A List Of Artists I Like Because I Like Thousands And Thousands And I've Been Influenced In Some Way By All Of Them.

I'm Against Cronyism, And I Had To Learn That Early On. Like, I Don't Have An Entourage, Because I Saw The Negative Effects Of Those Things.

When It's Over For A Woman, It's Over. You're Not Getting An Appeal.

Because Of The Way The Business Is Structured, I Have Sometimes Turned Down Scripts That I Might Otherwise Have Accepted Had I Known Who Was Directing Them.

Comedy Is Much Harder, It's A Lot More Exacting. You Can't Just Be Real And You Can't Just Use The Same Kind Of Techniques You Use To Fill Up A Regular Scene.

Son, We Live In A World That Has Walls And Those Walls Have To Be Guarded By Men With Guns. Who's Gonna Do It? You!?

One Of My School Friends' Parents Owned A Minigolf Course, And A Bunch Of Us Kids Would Play There All Day In The Summer. Two-under Deuces Was A Good Score.

Many Actors Will Try Something Different Once, But If It Isn't A Box Office Success They'll Never Do It Again. In My Opinion, There's No Point In Going On With This Job If You Do The Same Thing Over And Over Again.

This Town Needs An Enema!

Freedom In Every Sense But Primarily Political Sense, A Rise In Repression That Stems From A Repression Of Sexuality. It's Aids, It's Herpes, It's This, It's That. Ask Any Saloon Owner What's Happened To Social Life In America In The Past 12 Years And They'll Tell You It's A Different World And These People Are Strongly Misinformed By The Media, Peer Pressure.

He [castro] Is A Genius. We Spoke About Everything.

I Feel Very Lucky Because I Don't Think There's Any Part I Can't Play. There Are Parts That Scare Me More Than Others.

I Have A Lot Of Vanity.

I Sort Of Understood That When I First Started: That You Shouldn't Repeat A Success. Very Often You're Going To, And Maybe The First Time You Do, It Works. And You Love It. But Then You're Trapped.

Congratulations

It Always Bothered Me When People Came Off Stage And Were Told How Great They Were. They Weren't, Really, In My Opinion. It Was Then I Started Thinking That, Contrary To Conventional Wisdom, Film Was The Artful Medium For The Actor, Not The Stage.

I Have Mainly Been Interested In Acting. I Think It's A Great Job, A Fine Way To Live Your Life.

I'm An Actor Who They Said Was Wrinkled And Balding And Everything Else When I Was In My Early 30's. Most Of The People Who Wrote That Who Thought They Were Younger Than Me Are Now Bald And Wrinkled.

It's Difficult For People Sometimes To Recognise When They're Happy. People Sometimes Seem To Me To Be Afraid To Be Happy.

With Comedy, You Have To Do It Right. In A Drama, There's A Lot Of Different Ways To Succeed In A Moment. But Comedy Comes From Reality. You Can't Try To Be Funny.

Financially, I've Lost Money And Made Money, But I Know My Way Around Financially.

I've Been Too Many Places. I'm Like The Bad Penny.

I've Never Lost A Friend Over Work. I Come From A Small-town Environment And I Remember My Childhood Impressions That, If You Were A Conniver Or A Fink Or Whatever, Everybody Knew About It And You Were A Louse For The Rest Of Your Life. So I Never Lost Those Values In Some Way.

Rest Of Your Life

When We Make Mistakes They Call It Evil. When God Makes Mistakes They Call It Nature!

Making Mistakes

The Only Way To Break A Bad Habit Was To Replace It With A Better Habit.

I Assume Most Of The Characters I Play Are Exactly Like Me.

I Began To Think That The Finest Modern Writer Was The Screen Actor. This Was In The Spirit Of The Fifties Where A Very Antiliterary Literature Was Emerging - Kenneth Patchen And Others. I Kind Of Believed What Nietzsche Said, That Nothing Not Written In Your Blood Is Worth Reading; It's Just More Pollution Of The Airwaves.

When I Come Up Against A Director Who Has A Concept That I Don't Agree With, Or Maybe I Just Haven't Thought Of It Or Whatever, I'd Be More Prone To Go With Them Than My Own Because I Want To Be Out Of Control As An Actor, I Want Them To Have The Control, Otherwise It's Going To Become Predictably My Work, And That's Not Fun.

The Fuel For The Sports Fan Is The Ability To Have Private Theories.

Have You Ever Danced With The Devil In The Pale Moonlight?

It's A Slight Stretch Of The Imagination But Most People Are Alike In Most Ways So I've Never Had Any Trouble Identifying With The Character That I'm Playing.

In The Real World There's An After-effect Of Disappointment If You Lose An Argument. But If, To Begin With, You're Set Up Not To Have This Particular Autonomy, Then You're Not Disappointed.

There's Probably No One Who Understands Method Acting Better Academically Than I Do, Or Actually Uses It More In His Work. But It's Funny - Nobody Really Sees That. It's Perception Versus Reality, I Suppose.

You Know, I Think I Understand What You're Like Now. You're Very Beautiful And You Think Men Are Only Interested In You Because You're Beautiful. But You Want Them To Be Interested In You Because You're You. The Problem Is, Aside From All That Beauty, You're Not Very Interesting. You're Rude, You're Hostile, You're Sullen, You're Withdrawn... Oh, I Know- You Want Someone To Look Past All That At The Real Person Underneath. But The Only Reason Anyone Would Bother To Look Past All That Is Because You're Beautful. Ironic, Isn't It? In An Odd Way You're Your Own Problem.

It's The Post-literate Generation That Is Most Disturbing To A Movie-maker. The Explosions And The Knifings. People Like To Go To What's Hot And You Can't Get Past A Certain Gross Unless You Involve Children Who Go More Than Once.

In Other Words, I Wouldn't Like To Be An Actor If I Could Only Be Real. I Like To Get Wild, Behaviorally Wild, And It's Crazy To Think Of Any Form Where It's Just One Way.

Sometimes A Bit Of Distance Can Be Very Healthy. You Can Go Away By Yourself On A Trip And Come Back Very Glad To Be With Your Partner Because You've Cleared Your Head Out Of All The Negativity.

I Never Had A Policy About Marriage. I Got Married Very Young In Life And I Always Think In All Relationships, I've Always Thought That It's Counterproductive To Have A Theory On That.

I Hate Giving Advice, Because People Won't Take It.

The Average Celebrity Meets, In One Year, Ten Times The Amount Of People That The Average Person Meets In His Entire Life.

You Are More Thoughtful Because You Don't Act As Quickly Anymore. When I Turned 70 It Was The First Time I Felt Young For My Age. Fifty Dropped On Me Like A Ton Of Bricks - There Is Something About That Number - But When 70 Came Along I Felt Good About It.

Acting Is Everybody's Favorite Second Job.

You Have To Do Every Movie One At A Time. Trilogy Is Contrary To This Ideology. My Nightmare Is To Wake Up And Find Myself The Host Of A Tv Series.

I Resist All Established Beliefs. My Religion Basically Is To Be Immediate, To Live In The Now. It's An Old Cliche, I Know, But It's Mine. I Envy People Of Faith. I'm Incapable Of Believing In Anything Supernatural. So Far, At Least. Not That I Wouldn't Like To. I Mean, I Want To Believe. I Do Pray. I Pray To Something ... Up There. I Have A God Sense. It's Not Religious So Much As Superstitious. It's Part Of Being Human, I Guess ... Do Unto Others: How Much Deeper Into Religion Do We Really Need To Go?

I Don't Have Any Fear Of Intimacy, But Rather Thrive On It, Which Is Rare In A Public Person.

In This Industry, There Are Only Two Ways Up The Ladder. Rung By Rung Or Claw Your Way To The Top. It's Sure Been Tough On My Nails.

Trending Author

Category