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?‘

You don’t know when you’re being watched. That’s one of the weird things about celebrity. It’s my least favorite part of acting, celebrity.

You know, when you don’t go on TV and talk about how many women you sleep with, some people in Hollywood, that are supposedly ‚in the know,‘ start whispering that you’re gay. If I were gay, I wouldn’t be ashamed to admit it, but I’m not.

It’s simple: You get a part. You play a part. You play it well. You do your work and you go home. And what is wonderful about movies is that once they’re done, they belong to the people. Once you make it, it’s what they see. That’s where my head is at.

An actress is not a machine, but they treat you like a machine. A money machine.

I seem to be getting a lot of things pushed my way that are strong women. It’s like people see Hackers and they send me offers to play tough women with guns, the kind who wear no bra and a little tank top. I’d like to play strong women who are also very feminine.

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

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

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.

Playing big, heroic characters with heart is always a lot of fun. I enjoy making movies like that, and a lot of people love to live vicariously through those characters.

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

In Hollywood you can see things at night that are fast enough to be in the Olympics in the day time.

If I close my eyes and think of Hollywood, all I see is one big varicose vein.

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

I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. So for me to do that, it would have to be a story worth telling.

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

The quote-unquote ‚description‘ of a leading man was once your tall, handsome man with the build of whatever, almost a trophy to some degree. I think now it’s about making a leading man what you want a leading man to be. In this day, you can’t deny talent. You look at Jonah Hill, you look at Zach Galifianakis, you look at myself.

I have a big box of autographs. I took photographs of me and Marlene Dietrich, me and Ida Lupino. I took pictures of Myrna Loy and Joel McCrea in front of the studios. I loved Hollywood. I have 500 autographs and 500 photographs I took.

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.

On ‚Grey’s Anatomy‘ I wouldn’t care what I was playing – I would play a corpse, ‚cause I love it that much. It is deep true love, and it will never die.

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.

The dominant theory coming out of Hollywood is that peoples‘ attention spans are getting shorter and shorter and they need more stimulation.

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

I’m already the face of the UFC, plus the face of boxing, WWE, and Hollywood.

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

See, ‚A Time to Kill‘ was the one I got famous off of. Big ka-boom, over one weekend. After that, I did films that I really wanted to do.

Hollywood is not suited for me, and I am not suited for it.

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.

I really hope someday in Hollywood, some producer or director will hire me only to do drama.

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

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.

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

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

Whatever is on the page is what I’m married to. I’m very prepared. I’m a thespian. I don’t like to improv. I don’t like to go off course ‚cause I think that’s where stuff happens. When you stick to the material ‚cause it’s written so well, that’s where the magic happens.

I’d done a lot of research in Hollywood and in academia. I love research and so I wanted to kind of ground the book in history, in things that I read that were universal and timeless and then kind of let my own experiences sort of filter through all of this history.

Meryl Streep is exactly as awesome as you would imagine Meryl Streep to be.

I got started as an actor when I was 12.

I live in Hollywood, but you can’t make me love Hollywood. I’ll never love Hollywood.

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.

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.

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.

I had three points I wanted to make: That not everybody in Hollywood is on the left, that Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office, and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who’s not doing a good job. But I didn’t make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it.

I will never win an Oscar, and do you know why? First of all, because I’m not Jewish. Secondly, I make too much money for all those old farts in the Academy.

All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.

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.

When you’re supposed to be close and friends in the film, the moment you’re talking as friends off the set, it makes it that much better when you’re filming.

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.

All of the Vines that were acted & setup & had nice cameras, those weren’t the good Vines. The good Vines were, like, a random little kid in the middle of a forest, like, yelling.

I’m not a photographer, so I didn’t get into F-stops or ND filters or background, foreground, cross-light, all that stuff. But I was interested in the camera and the lenses. That’s the world that I’m moving in, in terms of acting and giving a performance.

I personally don’t like to go see romantic comedies. But people do want to see them, and they seem to want to see me in them.

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.

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

When the first big paycheque with ‚Dumb And Dumber‘ hit, I went: ‚Gosh, I wonder if this will affect my performance. Will I do a take and think, was that worth $7 million?‘ But that never happened. If anything, it made me rebel against that thing when people who get rich start playing it safe.

Acting is a question of absorbing other people’s personalities and adding some of your own experience.

My favorite movies of all times is ‚Doctor Zhivago,‘ and I love ‚Gone With the Wind.‘ I’d love to play some Southern belle or something where I owned a plantation.

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 born to play Hercules. I have loved and honored the mythology over the years – since I was a kid. When I first broke into Hollywood, ‚Hercules‘ was one of the movies that I – not chased, because I didn’t have the power to chase anything – but always had in the back of my mind.

I think the bottom of the totem pole is African-American women, or women of colour. I think they get the least opportunities in Hollywood.

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

The art of acting consists in keeping people from coughing.