I like talking. I like acting.

I don’t know what acting is, but I enjoy it.

I like to hide behind the characters I play. Despite the public perception, I am a very private person who has a hard time with the fame thing.

Act well your part, there all the honour lies.

You can’t get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.

I like my fair share of board games.

I wouldn’t use the word ‚scared‘ for my role as Hitchcock, but it was my most insecure. Taking on such a formidable, giant personality such as Hitchcock; he was one of the great geniuses of world cinema. Sheer genius.

When I do have free time, I spend it with friends, or I spend it at home writing or making something.

I used to draw a lot. If my mother would ask me to do something else, I’d have a hairy conniption. I’d just go crazy.

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the goverment.

I don’t have a vast longing for the stage.

As for hobbies, I don’t really read or watch TV.

I probably would have retired years ago if I hadn’t found interesting things to do.

I’m not a nerd, don’t plan to be a nerd and read books – which I can’t do at all.

At some point in time, you definitely have to go drama. Not to say that you’re going drama just because everybody else does it. You do it to challenge yourself. You do it because, naturally, in the profession of acting, you want to show growth. You want to say that you take the craft seriously.

George is a radio announcer, and when he walks under a bridge… you can’t hear him talk.

Acting is the perfect idiot’s profession.

I’ve always loved the idea of playing Black Adam.

I was asked to act when I couldn’t act. I was asked to sing ‚Funny Face‘ when I couldn’t sing, and dance with Fred Astaire when I couldn’t dance – and do all kinds of things I wasn’t prepared for. Then I tried like mad to cope with it.

I think everybody has something that they’ve been obsessed about in their lifetime.

I would say the most satisfying thing actually is watching my three children each pick up on their own interests and work many more hours per week than most people that have jobs at trying to intelligently give away that money in fields that they particularly care about.

Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community.

Stand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting.

My biggest hobby is hanging out with my family and kids.

When I am playing baseball, I give it all that I have on the ball field. When the ball game is over, I certainly don’t take it home. My little girl who is sitting out there wouldn’t know the difference between a third strike and a foul ball. We don’t talk about baseball at home.

A lot of people like to do certain things, but they’re not that good at it. Keep going through the things that you like to do, until you find something that you actually seem to be extremely good at. It can be anything.

I played Othello, but I didn’t sit around thinking how Laurence Olivier did it when he played it. That wouldn’t do me any good.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

He who talks more is sooner exhausted.

You can be passionate about anything.

I wouldn’t put myself forward to do a film like ‚Changeling‘ if I thought I couldn’t pull people into a story because of all the other ways people see me.

I can’t play soccer, and I’m not a great swimmer. I won’t drown, but you won’t see me doing laps in a pool.

It’s much more fun to play something you’re nothing like than what you are… It’s much easier to hide yourself in a character.

I’ve played real people before, but I never knew them.

I don’t get bored.

To describe my scarce leisure time in today’s terms, I always default to reading.

I got started as an actor when I was 12.

In acting, you have to pull from real-life situations, from people, to help develop a character.

What I do is just go over and over and over my lines and learn the script so well that I can just be easy and relaxed. That’s the way I always work.

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

I’ve got no need to prove to myself that I can do Shakespeare. I’ve done it.

I was ashamed to admit I was hipped to the idea of acting. That’s why I started in with the props.

We all know what flopping is when we see it. The stuff that you see is where guys aren’t really getting hit at all and are just flailing around like a fish out of water.

My act is an exaggeration of a part of me. I’m much more expressive off stage.

Life’s like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born.

When I’m in my 50s, I kind of think I’ll want to be in a garden.

I want to try something different in Hollywood, to tell the audience I am not just an actor star – I am an actor, too.

I never wanted to be a scientist per se. I wanted to be a naturalist.

On ‚Think Like a Man,‘ they got the best out of me because they allowed me to bring my own cadences and opinions to the character that I was playing. I think we got the best of that particular character.

I worked with Lawrence Olivier some years ago. He was a great mentor.

When I’m a director, I look at myself the actor as a completely different person. It’s somebody else up there, an actor playing a role. I keep myself out of it.

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument.

‚Via Dolorosa‘ is the only thing I have ever acted in my life, professionally, and I’ll never act again.

Why, except as a means of livelihood, a man should desire to act on the stage when he has the whole world to act in, is not clear to me.

Acting is a nice childish profession – pretending you’re someone else and, at the same time, selling yourself.

I have a nice office. I have a nice house… So I’m not denying myself some great things. I just don’t happen to have expensive hobbies.

The term ‚globalisation‘ is conventionally used to refer to the specific form of investor-rights integration designed by wealth and power, for their own interests.

Talking isn’t doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.

It’s really fun to put yourself into a character – into shoes you wouldn’t normally be in.

It’s very rare that you get a director that lets you be creative and bring what you feel your character should do or should be.