I never started out to be an action actor. I was an ensemble actor.
I’m not handsome in the classical sense. The eyes droop, the mouth is crooked, the teeth aren’t straight, the voice sounds like a Mafioso pallbearer, but somehow it all works.
Playing polo is like trying to play golf during an earthquake.
When crossing someone’s borders you have to be prepared to engage in a war that is far more brutal than if it were to take place on neutral territory.
Until America, door to door, takes every handgun, this is what you’re gonna have. It’s pathetic. It really is pathetic. It’s sad. We’re living in the Dark Ages over there.
Some actors are brilliant character guys. They submerge.
I am a sensitive writer, actor and director. Talking business disgusts me. If you want to talk business, call my disgusting personal manager.
There is an age-old proverb that really does hold true in every area of life – in relations between nations and right down to the most subtle and sophisticated or must unstable and unsophisticated relations between lovers – and it is this: they took “kindness” for “weakness.”
If bad decorating was a hanging offense, there’d be bodies hanging from every tree!
Once in one’s life, for one mortal moment, one must make a grab for immortality; if not, one has not lived.
I made some truly awful movies. ‘Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot’ was the worst. If you ever want someone to confess to murder just make him or her sit through that film. They will confess to anything after 15 minutes.
People think retiring is fun. Well, maybe, but if you have a certain kind of fire inside, there is no end in sight.
That’s what Rocky is all about: pride, reputation, and not being another bum in the neighborhood.
Rambo isn’t violent. I see Rambo as a philanthropist.
Action film is really easy to do, you just get in a car and smash through things and it’s called action. The real key is what happens between the action when it’s quiet. Loud is easy. Quiet, real hard.
I’d rather do something I love badly than to feel bad about not doing something I love.
Racing’s very much like the world of acting. You have your front runners and you have guys that are there for the long race, and you have other guys that block for other people, that are called supporting and character actors. It’s all the same kind of situation.
Everyone has this conjecture that action films are somewhat less prestigious than dramatic films. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve done them both and this is hard and dangerous.
Most of the films I myself like don’t do very well. Every director, he has a choice, whether to go for subtlety and try to articulate every minute detail, or to go for the broad strokes and hope that the people will fill in between the lines. I tend to go for the broader strokes.
Plan B. You’ve always got to have a Plan B.