I haven't planned a reaction on anything... If you do, you've screwed up.
I have never worked with anyone who I hold in higher esteem than Chris Menges. He's an absolute, bona fide, authentic artist.
All I know is that my best work has come out of being committed and happy.
David Cronenberg knows what we actors do as artists.
It just seems like that because I do a lot of independent films that don't get to the mainstream.
The funnel of deep feeling and profound satisfaction in life comes from the capacity to feel.
The perfection in theater is that it's over the second it's done.
For as privileged an actor as I have been, TV as a standard is short shrift. They have to do it so quickly that they don't stop and take a look. They just shoot. So that's one of the reasons I typically stay away from it. I think art is an act of consideration, and if you're not considering, I don't think you're really doing mankind a favor.
I was very lucky when I was a kid - I travelled a lot and spent a lot of time in Africa, Asia and Europe. I also chant in Sanskrit.
You can only sit on the frustration of wanting to express something for so long.
I have a film I want to direct. Gena Rowlands was going to do it with me a long time ago. It's about an older woman who's running a ranch in the west the old fashioned way.
Heroes to me are guys that sit in libraries. They absorb knowledge and then the risks they take are calculated on the basis of the courage it took to become replete with knowledge.
We'd like to prearrange our life on all levels. We'd prefer it to be scripted. But it's not.
I'm coming from the notion that acting is an art. It is not a business. It is about building characters, not about selling personalities.
I generally try to think of what it is I want to express and then find a way of expressing it.
The thing is David is also aware of everything and it's not like you're going somewhere the director is not.
Great risks come in long term, tremendously assiduous, very courageous study.
Every single second of extra time to work with other actors has definitely always, for me, paid off for the film. For the project. Every single extra heartbeat you could get, mutually considering the scene, was of benefit.
I want to prove a point. That point is, actors are artists, not narcissists necessarily.
I need six weeks of rehearsal and women need nine months and it took me 15 years to figure that out.
My greatest offering is my concept. It isn't my face.
I live in the county where my mother was born and buried.
It was the moment I learned acting is not acting out. After that light went on, I spent the rest of my life trying to figure out how to make other people realize it.
People who have expertise or the luck to have rehearsal time with cameras have it over people who don't.
It's been a long comeback. Things were pretty dark for me. But I have a faith now, and it saves my day. I was angry with God for a long time because I was unhappy with me. I hadn't learned to make the distinction between God and my parents. But there's a peace now. In the end, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.
If you don't exercise, you don't stay strong. I like to work with talented people.
The point is that there are challenges within techniques. When you differentiate in technique, you challenge yourself; you ask yourself the same question in a new way.
Where did I study? I went to P.S. 6. I went to Collegiate, Middlesex, Tufts, Juilliard.
I am just as comfortable in Britain and France as I am in America... but nowhere is perfect.
Post-adolescence reaches usually into the late 30s.
I grew up in the South Pacific. Basically, my brothers were Guamanian. I spoke words of Guamanian long before I spoke words of English, and so I've seen a lot. You know, I've traveled in places where people don't have the benefits of American life. And so I've seen a lot of stuff.
I was held hostage and almost executed by a man who was robbing us in the middle of the night.
I'm not going to party. I'm going to go do something that will make me break a sweat.
Being famous is not something that would make me feel successful - unless one was striving for mediocrity.
I don't want my children to have to wade through the crap to get to the cream, you know. I want them to be aware that I struggled to live with and tell my truth, and that it was a decent thing.
I'm an actor. I play roles in films and theaters. I don't act out, and I don't play people.
I very much prefer the balance in a scene to standing out and so you have to make a decision.
My first cousin, by the way, on my father's mother side was John Marshall Harlan, who was a Supreme Court justice, as was his grandson. And I think a lot of my fight and my work to struggle for fairness and the techniques of theater and in subject matter probably stems in some way from some sense I have of his issues in life.
Play is play, fun is fun, and work is work. They're different. I work hard; even if it's supposed to be fun for someone else, it's work for me.
I listen to XM radio because I can get so many overseas news stations.
What's really frustrating with movies is the lack of improvement.
I didn't study interviews. I studied acting.
Celebrity is a pathological sickness of the culture. Narcissists on screen being consumed by narcissists off-screen.
The simple fact of existence, of being aware that you are aware; this to me is the most astounding fact.
The achievement is appreciation. Your ability to be surprised and awed by beauty!
I am not a famous person at home - I'm just a guy here. I'm a father, I'm a companion, I'm a human being. I am not a public figure in my house; I am not a celebrity. I am not a famous person to myself - I am just a guy.
The thing is, I don't believe in most of what's done. The amount of financial and imaginative energy that's put into mediocrity is just amazing which I find to be fundamentally offensive as a human being.
The irony is that the more specific you are in the portrayal of character, the more like other people you are. In the same way, the more you think about how alone you are in this life, you realise how much a brother and sister everyone else is.
Being a father, being a friend, those are the things that make me feel successful.
