I don’t stretch my hand out anymore, but I never get tired of waiting for the next magic.
The close-up says everything.
The most repulsive thing you could ever imagine is the inside of a camel’s mouth. That and watching a girl eat octopus or squid.
I have decided to tell the story of my life as best I can, so that my children can separate the truth from the myths that others have created about me, as myths are created about everyone swept up in the turbulent and distorting maelstrom of celebrity in our culture.
Acting is an empty and usless profession.
Working with any actor is like working with a monkey.
There’s a line in the picture where he snarls, ‘Nobody tells me what to do.’ That’s exactly how I’ve felt all my life.
People around me never say anything. They just seem to want to hear what I have to say. That’s why I do all the talking.
It’s the hardest thing in the world to accept a ‘little’ success and leave it that way.
If there’s anything unsettling to the stomach, it’s watching actors on television talk about their personal lives.
Food has always been my friend. When I wanted to feel better or had a crisis in my life, I opened the icebox.
Acting is the least mysterious of all crafts. Whenever we want something from somebody or when we want to hide something or pretend, we’re acting. Most people do it all day long.
The military mind has one aim, and that is to make soldiers react as mechanically as possible. They want the same predictability in a man as they do in a telephone or a machine gun, and they train their soldiers to act as a unit, not as individuals.
Mafia is the best example of capitalism we have.
George Bernard Shaw said that thinking was the greatest of all human endeavors, but I would say that feeling was. Allowing yourself to feel things, to feel love or wrath, hatred, rage.
Most writers write haphazardly. The actor is fighting unjustified words all the time.
If the expenditure of money for entertainment in America is any indication of taste, clearly the majority of us are addicted to trash.
If you’re successful, acting is about as soft a job as anybody could ever wish for. But if you’re unsuccessful it’s worse than having a skin disease.
Even today I meet people who think of me automatically as a tough, insensitive, coarse guy named Stanley Kowalski. They can’t help it, but, it is troubling.
The only reason I’m in Hollywood is that I don’t have the moral courage to refuse the money.