If I work with a bad actor, my reaction is to immediately become worse than they are.
I’ve done my job and I’ve got the picture out there, and I’m very happy with it.
I’ve been on movies where I literally couldn’t hear what the other actor was saying. It’s very awkward.
If you put someone on screen long enough, they become the hero.
I’ve always played very human sort of characters.
I’m very much more choosy now. I do stuff that I really, really, really like.
I’m not in the Lifetime Achievement area yet-I’m still battling it out in the trenches.
That to me is what my idea of film acting should be. There shouldn’t be any acting. You should just be watching a real person.
I don’t meet stockbrokers or carpenters or coal miners; I spend all day with actors, composers and photographers.
I sit waiting for things that I can’t refuse.
You can’t get blase about something you haven’t done yet.
You don’t make any money when you’re my age. The stars get it all. That’s a lie, actually.
I feel that I helped the working class by just saying there are no barriers, which I consider to be true.
Presenting the Oscars was the most nerve-racking job I have ever done in show business. It’s very much a live show: they have comedy writers waiting in the wings, and as you come off between presentations, they hand you an appropriate gag to tell.
I’m trying to work only with established, respected directors. I took a lot of bad scripts and worked for a lot of lazy directors, and it was discouraging to go to the screenings and see that the director had added nothing, the editor had added nothing, there was nothing to see.
I’ve had such a great time, I’d like to come back as me – and do it all over again.
My circle of friends are not actors at all. None of them are actors, really, because they’re are not available. They’re always off somewhere.
I never bring a role home with me. The moment they say, ‘It’s a wrap,’ it’s gone completely. I’m a totally ruthless professional, and life is my family, not my work.
For me, the performance was always playing different people. And so when I got older, was no longer the romantic leading movie star, it became more and more interesting for me, the characters I played, you know?
I was a repertory actor, which meant that I did a play every week. I was a different character every week; for a year, I was doing 40 or 50 characters.