I think all those actors from that generation, like Bogart – they were wonderful actors. They didn’t act. They just came on and they did it, and the characters were wonderful.

Acting is just a way of making a living, the family is life.

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

It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.

I will not play just an evil part. In fact, I got offered $7 million several years ago to play the part that Faye Dunaway played in ‚Supergirl.‘ I was kind of insulted. I was impressed with the money, but I said, ‚Why are you asking me to play an evil witch? Do I come across as an evil witch to you?‘

If you look at me in ‚Ride Along,‘ even though I’m playing two different characters, my demeanor and my tone were not aggressive.

Movies are a fad. Audiences really want to see live actors on a stage.

People usually think according to their inclinations, speak according to their learning and ingrained opinions, but generally act according to custom.

I enjoy acting when you really hit it right.

I want to play a fireman and a spy. I want to learn special effects.

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.

This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

Meryl and Katharine Hepburn are probably the two greatest actresses of this and the last century.

One good thing about acting in film is that it’s good therapy.

It’s nice to finally get scripts offered to me that aren’t the ones Tom Hanks wipes his butt with.

I did go to Wellesley, a women’s college. And I am of a kind of strange generation which is transitional in terms of women who wanted to go out and get jobs.

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.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

I enjoyed working with Stephen Merchant. He was wonderful. I’ve been such a big fan of his acting.

My role 14 years ago in Richard III – that was the first time I played a bad guy and learned a lot about it – they have all the fun!

I’m speaking for all of us. I’m the spokesman for a generation.

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

I never wanted to stay in one genre; I never wanted to be pigeon-holed or defined as the actor who only worked in one genre. I want to be able to work in all different genres. For me it’s fun, and that’s how I grow as an actor.

I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead.

Like a baseball game, wars are not over till they are over. Wars don’t run on a clock like football. No previous generation was so hopelessly unrealistic that this had to be explained to them.

Oh yes. I’m an actor, so I just learn my lines, and show up and do it. I gave it a little bit of thought.

In every movie I do have a dialogue.

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

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

We were the first generation to have to deal with the modern stardom of football. Some handled it better than others.

I think that people are interested seeing me on the screen.

There is a need for aloneness, which I don’t think most people realise for an actor. It’s almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you’ll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you’re acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They’d all like sort of a chunk of you.

I’ve been fortunate. I don’t pick scripts. Scripts pick me.

Act well your part, there all the honour lies.

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument.

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.

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

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.

The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.

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

Actors search for rejection. If they don’t get it they reject themselves.

When I started out, I didn’t have any desire to be an actress or to learn how to act. I just wanted to be famous.

My show ‚The Big House‘ was picked up; they flew me to New York. I’m about to step on stage to announce Kevin Hart’s ‚The Big House.‘ And a hand grabs my shoulder, ‚Kevin no, they just decided to cancel it.‘ It’s a serious smack-in-the-face business, and either you can take it, or you can’t.

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the stars.

I love performing, you know, because, like I say, I’m a ham for this stuff.

I prefer directing to acting. There is huge freedom that comes from being behind the camera. It brings a lot of responsibilities as well but is intensely rewarding.

I was acting when I was playing baseball.

All I have to say is basically if performing, singing, acting, and dancing is what you want to do, then you just have to do it – no matter where it is.

My mother is a strong, wonderful woman. I could never be anything she didn’t want me to be.

You know when you’re young and you see a play in high school, and the guys all have gray in their hair and they’re trying to be old men and they have no idea what that’s like? It’s just that stupid the other way around.

I know that some actors and directors like to have intensity on set. I don’t, particularly. Certainly, if they want that, that’s fine, but I can’t work like that.

I’ve been really fortunate to be able to do different kinds of films in different scales, different genres, different kinds of roles, and that is important to me.

For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.

The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits.

I’d go from film to film and almost detach from one world and jump in another. I was living as these people and not having a self. I didn’t know who I was. And things just get really dark.

I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery.

Michelle Pfeiffer hasn’t been finding a lot of work recently because she doesn’t like what a woman her age is offered. That’s a real double standard. You get Sean Connery, who gets older and older, still playing opposite young ladies, but it doesn’t work the other way around.

Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians – you are not like him.

Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, ‚One tear, right now,‘ that one tear would pop out.