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.

In the beginning, I was very insecure. I hated how I looked in pictures.

I can’t act!

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

Sometimes, indeed, there is such a discrepancy between the genius and his human qualities that one has to ask oneself whether a little less talent might not have been better.

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.

Genius, when young, is divine.

I was acting when I was playing baseball.

Leaders who are kind of insecure or egocentric, they basically sabotage themselves.

I was a very shy character, always feeling uncomfortable because everybody was stronger than I, and always afraid I would look like a sissy. Everybody else played baseball; everybody else did all kinds of athletic things.

The art of acting is not to act. Once you show them more, what you show them, in fact is bad acting.

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 think I have had so much blessing – I’ve had my brother, who was brilliant – I think my family came closest to making a genius when they made my brother – Bailey was just all of that. He loved me.

There has to be something in every role that interests you.

In every movie I do have a dialogue.

Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.

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.

Acting is the most minor of gifts. After all, Shirley Temple could do it when she was four.

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored.

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.

A lot of artists fail when they try to act, and they flop. So when I get into acting, it’s going to be to do it well, something good, something of quality. I want people to say, ‚Wow, that movie‘ – or that show or whatever – ‚turned out really well.‘

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.

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

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.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.

We think it’s fun for our kids to have cameos and join us on set, but not to be actors. That’s not our goal for Brad and me at all. I think we would both prefer that they didn’t become actors.

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.

To see things in the seed, that is genius.

Actors know what actors are insecure about – and they’re all insecure.

Acting helped me as I was growing up. It helped me learn about myself, helped me travel, helped me understand life, express myself, all those wonderful things. So I’m very, very grateful; it’s a fun job. It’s a luxury.

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.

Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.

Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.

Acting is just a process of relaxation, actually. Knowing the text so well and trusting that the instinct and the subconscious mind, whatever you want to call it, is going to take over.

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.

No great genius has ever existed without some touch of madness.

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.

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.

Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

Common sense is the genius of humanity.

I am able to play monsters well. I understand monsters. I understand madmen.

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.

The capacity of the female mind for studies of the highest order cannot be doubted, having been sufficiently illustrated by its works of genius, of erudition, and of science.

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.

The role of the intellectual cannot be to excuse the violence of one side and condemn that of the other.

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.

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.

An actor is supposed to be a sensitive instrument.

A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.

Change is always tough. Even for those who see themselves as agents of change, the process of starting a new thing can cause times of disorientation, uncertainty and insecurity.

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or Nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected.

I got started as an actor when I was 12.

I want to show audiences I can act.

Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.

I enjoy acting when you really hit it right.

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.

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.

My mom always wanted me to be an actor. And I started going to theater and going on auditions young.

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.

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.

I always play women I would date.