Quotes

Acting? It's a longstanding compulsion I've had since I was about five or six years old. I can literally identify the moment it struck me. I went to see a play [If I Were a Princess] in which a babysitter of mine [Betsy True, who later acted on Broadway] was performing. I was completely shell-shocked by the magic of this little community-theater play; it just riveted me.

I don't smoke and I don't want to smoke. I am not a fan of gratuitous smoking in films.

Life, like poker has an element of risk. It shouldn't be avoided. It should be faced.

If I ever have to stop taking the subway, I'm gonna have a heart attack.

Fame is very corrosive and you have to guard very strictly against it.

I've never felt any particular encroachment of the 'celebrity' stuff into my life.

I'm an actor and, each time out, I'm trying to convince the audience that I'm this character. Every little thing that people know about you as a person impedes your ability to achieve that kind of terrific suspension of disbelief that happens when an audience goes with an actor and character [he's] playing.

The more you can create that magic bubble, that suspension of disbelief, for a while, the better.

It's a nice position to be in; I'm lucky. At the same time, all the excitement of that has been put into stark perspective ... In some ways, the highs of it have been blunted, which in a way, is a gift.

First of all, you never make all things for all people and can't always pander to the broadest denominator. I keep an eye toward doing the themes that interest me. Do they move me? Interest me? Make me think? When I run across something that is provocative in an unsettling way, it appeals to me.

People wrestle sometimes making movies, and I think that conflict is a very essential thing. I think a lot of very happy productions have produced a lot of very banal movies.

I'm not interested in making movies for everybody. I like making movies for myself and my friends and people with my sensibility.

I always felt that acting was an escape, like having the secret key to every door and permission to go into any realm and soak it up. I enjoy that free pass.

Nobody makes me uncomfortable here. It's a place where you can be eternally anonymous. - the reason he loves living in New York City.

In fact, the United States today keeps on making the same sort of mistakes. We force those methods we think are useful on a few countries, hoping to make a few changes.

I get heartbroken flying into L.A. It's just this feeling of unspecific loss. Can you imagine what the San Fernando Valley was when it was all wheat fields? Can you imagine what John Steinbeck saw?

Just because you've made a couple movies, you've done some good movies, you've been nominated for some Academy Awards, whatever, nobody's entitled. It's a business. If they don't see it, I can think they're wrong, but I'm not entitled to a $15 million budget to make a film.

He has such a rich mellifluous voice. Anytime I would hear him speak, it would remind me of how flat my voice is. (about Ralph Fiennes)

[on showing Marlon Brando The Simpsons (1989)] I showed him the episode where Marge gets cast in a musical version of "A Streetcar Named Desire". He loved it. Marlon loves stuff like that.

[on Robert De Niro] I look at De Niro, and the thing I admire about him is just the length and diversity of his career. He has just done so much wonderful work and so many different kinds of work. That to me is worth something.

I remember when I heard they were making The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), I was like, 'God, if they cheese those out, I'm going to be so disappointed. (But) those films were inspiring to me in terms of deciding to take The Incredible Hulk (2008).

[on his role as a policeman in Pride and Glory (2008)] I started to have a special interest in this project when I thought this could actually be something that's reflecting the moment we are going through - in terms of a nation and as a culture - regarding a sense of ethics.

All people are paradoxical. No one is easily reducible, so I like characters who have contradictory impulses or shades of ambiguity. It's fun, and it's fun because it's hard.

I haven't personally really engaged in a lot of this new kind of social networking stuff like Twitter or Facebook or MySpace. I mean, the notion of people following what I am doing every day is like torture for me. It's absolutely the last thing that I'm looking for. It seems to me to be really just about social chatter.

When you're working on a creative thing, everyone has an idea, and they're pushing it. The first time you work with anybody, you have to get comfortable with the way another person pushes hard for what they want. Familiarity breeds contempt, people say. But I've found, for creative things, familiarity breeds peace of mind, because you realize you know someone better. You trust each other. You know not to take things a certain way, or a wrong way. You get to where you don't have to waste quite so much time with diplomacy. Things are a little more efficient.

We've had a seminal legal decision whereby the Supreme Court defined corporations as having the same rights as individuals. It's having a massive impact on our politics. It's unleashed unlimited corporate spending on our elections, which is terrifying. The facade is now fully peeled off. There's no pretense about having limitations over how wealthy individuals and corporations can exert an unhealthy influence on politics with their money. It used to be a game - now no one's pretending any more. Individuals can contribute $20million while previously the maximum was $5,000. It's a radical transformation. You wonder what will occur before people feel it's creating an imbalance which diminishes them.

I studied music, theater and fine arts. My mother taught English literature and courses on Shakespeare (William Shakespeare). She was a regular theatergoer and I used to go with her. When I was 16, I saw Ian McKellen do a one-man show called Acting Shakespeare. It had an impact on my sense that acting was something you could do as an adult that affected people, that it wasn't just for entertainment, that you could change someone's mind with it. I started performing in the theater a lot more after that.

There's been a shift from people buying DVDs to streaming them online. The studios have been asleep at the switch and suffered a huge loss of revenue from falling DVD sales. Unfortunately, that revenue was often what helped convince them to make films which aren't blockbusters. Studios aren't as willing to make mid-budget, more thoughtful films aimed at adults. It's more challenging to get those films made than it was.

I spent a lot of my early career in the theatre - and by that I mean as an usher.

[About congress & global warming] I have very little doubt that the legacy of my generation is going to hinge on how we respond to these revelations that we're not living sustainably and that we are altering the environment.

[About George W. Bush] I almost forgot what it's like to be proud of my government.

If I ever have to stop taking the subway, I'm going to have a heart attack.

[After not voting for George W. Bush in 2004] Do tax breaks for movie stars make any sense to you?

I grew up an honorary Jew. If you go to more than ten barmitzvahs you get an honorary Jew certificate. I went to at least ten in one year. I was drunk on Manischevitz half of 1987!

[About doing sequels] I think you can sort of do anything once, but if you do it too many times, it can become a suit that's hard to take off, in other people's eyes.