I’ve always said the one advantage an actor has of converting to a director is that he’s been in front of the camera. He doesn’t have to get in front of the camera again, subliminally or otherwise.

I think the whole stigma of ‚black movies‘ is slowly being lost. When you look at movies like ’12 Years A Slave,‘ to ‚The Butler,‘ to ‚The Best Man,‘ to ‚Ride Along,‘ to even ‚Think Like a Man‘ from last year – these movies are just good movies.

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

Our combat mission is ending, but our commitment to Iraq’s future is not.

I loved photography and everybody said it was a crazy thing to do because in those days nobody made it into the film business. I mean, unless you were related to somebody there was no way in.

I love Steve Carell.

I have an immense amount of respect for acting. I’ve always loved movies and was always fascinated by movie-making. But to become an actor, I wanted to commit myself.

Let me even say before I even get inaugurated, during the transition we are going to be having meetings all across the country with community organizations so that you have input into the agenda for the next presidency of the United States of America.

I got started as an actor when I was 12.

Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor – over each other.

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.

It is a neck-and-neck race between Mr. Gray and myself who shall complete our apparatus first. He has the advantage over me in being a practical electrician – but I have reason to believe that I am better acquainted with the phenomena of sound than he is – so that I have an advantage there.

Movies were invented for Jimmy Cagney, and he was invented for the movies. A perfect match.

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

We Americans think, in every country in transition, there’s a Thomas Jefferson hiding behind some rock or a James Madison beyond one sand dune.

I’ve choreographed all of my movies.

‚Leading man‘ just means people want to see you and assume that you can hold a film, carry a movie.

I’m not really an actor, I’m a reactor; I’m a pitchman. That’s what I do best. Nobody can do it any better.

It’s easy to become very self-critical when you’re an actor. Then you get critiqued by the critics. Whether you agree with them or not, people are passing judgment on you.

There’s a lot of great movies that have won the Academy Award, and a lot of great movies that haven’t. You just do the best you can.

Alfred Hitchcock once told me, when I was analyzing a lot of things about his pictures, ‚Clint, you must remember, it’s only a movie.‘

As a soccer player, I wanted an FA Cup winner’s medal. As an actor you want an Oscar. As a chef it’s three-Michelin’s stars, there’s no greater than that. So pushing yourself to the extreme creates a lot of pressure and a lot of excitement, and more importantly, it shows on the plate.

I started in action, and then I went to comedy school.

The next thing I knew, I was out of the service and making movies again. My first picture was called, GI Blues. I thought I was still in the army.

Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, ‚I want to get out and become like him‘. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that.

Because of my wrestling background, nothing a director can throw at me on a set can faze me.

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.

When you work with kids, especially, you want to be ready to turn the camera on at a moment’s notice.

Being young is a great advantage, since we see the world from a new perspective and we are not afraid to make radical changes.

Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

I make American films for American audiences and Asian films for Asian audiences.

Besides entertainment and action, I want to educate. You know, as a producer or director, we do have a responsibility to society.

At the end of the day, the TV show is the best job in the world. I get to go anywhere I want, eat and drink whatever I want. As long as I just babble at the camera, other people will pay for it. It’s a gift.

We have entered an age in which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex, industrialized society. We have truly entered the century of the educated man.

I’ve seen too many ups and downs in the movie industry.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

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.

If my films make one more person miserable, I’ll feel I have done my job.

Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.

We are in the throes of a transition where every publication has to think of their digital strategy.

I like to change characters and then, slowly I believe the audience treat me as, like an actor who can fight. It’s not like an action star.

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

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

Actors I admire? Ed Harris, or course, I think he’s terrific; because I know he always had to fight being what he looked like a lot, but I think he’s a terrific actor.

I feel like I might be a designer or stylist – or a director because I have always been super interested in cameras and editing.

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

There’s people constantly asking you for something on set, so the multi-tasking of motherhood transfers very well to being a director. And I think you’re compassionate.

There is but one stage for the peasant and the actor.

I have been trying to retire to the back of the camera for quite a few years, and in 1970, when I first started directing, I said, ‚If I could pull this off, I can some day move to the back of the camera and stay there.‘

Well, in order for me to be successful… In order to be a great artist – musician, actor, painter, whatever – you must be able to be private in public at all times.

I am capable of holding the quote-unquote ‚title‘ of leading man. Leading man just means people want to see you and assume that you can hold a film, carry a movie.

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.

The great advantage of a hotel is that it is a refuge from home life.

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.

I want to be an Asian Robert De Niro.

Who is the most sensible person? The one who finds what is to their own advantage in all that happens to them.

But I do believe that there’s going to be a time where all movies are going to be made in 3D and it’s just going to be a given, and that is going to be an exciting time.

I liked Vittorio De Sica a lot, and I got to work with him once in a segment movie. He was a great director. He was a very charismatic character and a guy I watched a lot when he was directing.

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 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.