The Secret Service is a strange group. They don’t really have a leader. It’s not set up like a military. Each one is supposed to be able to act like a leader when something comes up.
News is something that happens that matters to you, which is not most of what we watch on television.
Big movies are fun and it’s great to fly on private jets and make a lot of money and all the things that are connected with Hollywood, but they take a lot of your own life.
It’s a really weird thing, modern divorce. I found out I was getting divorced on television. That was kind of weird.
A wonderful but kind of a terrible truth about acting is that you actually get to a point where you become content with an impossible task: it is really impossible to properly prepare. You kind of have to start over every time.
I probably complained more when I was younger. The movie industry can be frustrating but I think sometimes I could have been more helpful, approaching a film as a partnership rather than being critical of a director’s ignorance. I wasn’t sensitive to the fact that it’s very hard to direct.
There was no one around called ‘Val’ when I was young, so I wanted to be John or Bill. Now I like it.
The first play I saw was a Samuel Beckett play which was great.
Life is precious, and when someone dies it’s an opportunity to realise how precious it is. My brother drowned when I was 17. He was 15. I think I grew from that. My father didn’t. It really crushed him.
There are only three reasons to do a movie: the cast, the director, the role. Like I say, you live in a minute of screen time, but to prepare for the minute takes much more than a day. You’d better be excited about what those moments are, even if they’re the hardest moments. Or the smallest.
So it’s always helped me to have a foundation, an ideal to strive for and goals. It’s hard for me to be disciplined and plan things.
You just don’t understand humility until you have children and get divorced.
My first girlfriend in high school, I had a girlfriend in grade school, but my first girlfriend in high school was Mare Winningham, very fine actress.
It’s the persona that makes you a leading actor. A leading actor has something extra that’s fun to watch. But it isn’t usually about acting.
Hollywood is wonderful, but it does eat its young.
I love that Bob Dylan asked me to be in the first movie he wrote.
I live on a ranch that’s larger than Manhattan. That’s a weird circumstance.
I just don’t think I’ve ever been comfortable at public functions and selling myself as an entity.
I can safely say that no one who has ever won an Oscar didn’t want to win an Oscar.
Hollywood’s like a warehouse. It’s just a place that you go. What’s interesting in the warehouse has to do with the creative people.