I love working with Bob Zemeckis. I think he's amazing and wonderful to work with.

I had kind of an attitude, which was not uncommon in New York. Theater people who went to Hollywood to do sitcoms were selling out. That was the attitude. And I didn't really relish the idea of being cast in a sitcom, because I shared that attitude.

I ventured into a world of sitcom, and I have no regrets. I loved it.

I'm slow to pick things up. Everybody always seems to know more than I do.

I wanted to do film. I was living in New York and working in theater, but I always wanted to do film.

I did so many interviews and auditions for films, and it was just zilch. Nothing I did impressed anybody! I could just feel it. It was always, 'Okay, thank you, Mr. Lloyd.' Then, out of the blue, 'Cuckoo's Nest' came to cast. A casting director who sent me up for different things over the years sent me up for that, and it just clicked.

Judge Doom is such an evil cartoon! It was just such fun to do. I liked the whole mystique of it: the long cape, the glasses, and all that stuff. You grow up with horror films as a kid, and it all seemed to be embodied in that one guy.

I grew up near New York, and there were a lot of summer stock theaters in the area. I started an apprenticing with some of the theaters. Not really acting in them - I did everything else: everything but act.

I love watching film. I love watching stories. I watch the people in them... Even, sometimes, films that nobody else can watch - 'How could you look at that? It's lousy' - I can look at it and be totally into it.

When I started out, I didn't know if I was ever going to make a movie.

When I go to Comic-Cons and people line up for autographs, so many people have a story about how they are moved, how they get tearful about what 'Back To The Future' meant to them.

I don't worry too much about typecasting. I just figure, one way or another, I'm going to find another role.

I like television, but there's not as much freedom as there is in film or theatre, and I always felt that there is a certain pressure in being able to put out a product, but it's OK.

I'm kind of lethargic in real life.

It was 1976, and I was acting off-Broadway with a pair of Canadians: Victor Garber and Gale Garnett. The play was called 'Cracks,' and Martin Sherman, the man who wrote it, went on a few years later to have a giant hit with 'Bent.' But not this time around. Opening night was a disaster.

The outburst of sexual freedom in the '60s was bound to happen because the '50s were so oppressing. You had to live that way; women had to be like this - it was all locked into a false reality.

The seas are rising, and millions of people are going to be affected by that - and already are. We have to make sure there's enough food, water, and air.

I'll run into somebody, and of all the movies I've done, they may say something about 'Back to the Future' or whatever, but then they make reference to 'Clue' very favorably.

The film 'Back to the Future' certainly did a lot to put me where I am today, and I did not foresee that. I just was hoping the film would open successfully, the first one, but it's gone way beyond what I think most of us have imagined.

At its best, life is completely unpredictable.

I used to be prettier than I am, but I think I look better now. I was a pretty boy. Particularly in my early movies. I don't like looking at them so much. There's a sort of pretty thing about me.

As an actor you become that lighting rod between the person who made the play and the audience.

My father passed away a couple of years ago, but he was very old. He was almost a 100 years old. And, you know, he had a very good life. He came to America and he had a good life.

I'd love to do a character with a wife, a nice little house, a couple of kids, a dog, maybe a bit of singing, and no guns and no killing, but nobody offers me those kind of parts.

When I was a kid I joined the circus. I did that. It is true. But it's not like you think. There was a guy, he had his own circus. His name was Carol Jacobs and he owned it. It was a small thing.

Quite often, I'll be sent a script for a movie. And I find that I like it, so I say I'll do it. But then they rewrite it for me. They make it quirky. Odd. I find that rather annoying. I call it Walkenising.

I like cats a lot. I've always liked cats. They're great company. When they eat, they always leave a little bit at the bottom of the bowl. A dog will polish the bowl, but a cat always leaves a little bit. It's like an offering.

They have a kind of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby thing going on.

Acting has to do with saying it as if you meant it, so for me the words are always very important. It's very important for me to know my lines, know them so well that I don't have to think about them.

An actor really is a kind of intermediary between an audience and the piece, whether it's a play or movie.

I like to stand in my kitchen with the script on a counter that's about chest high. Usually I do something else at the same time - make a chicken or slice vegetables - and all day long I just read it over and over and over.

I think that weddings have probably been crashed since the beginning of time. Cavemen crashed them. You go to meet girls. It makes sense.

There's an impression that actors make a lot of choices. I just take what's there.

My hair was famous before I was.

I have a friend of mine who does me on his answering machine, and when I call him, I answer. It's pretty strange.

I don't have a lot of hobbies. I don't play golf. I don't have any children. Things that occupy people's time. I just try to take jobs.

When I was a kid, I worked in the circus. It was a touring circus that was owned by a man named Terrell Jacobs. It was just one big tent, and he was a lion tamer. He didn't have any kids, but the bit was that I would dress up as his son in an identical outfit.

There are people who are able to plan their career, their future, but I've never had any talent for that. I just do things and hope for the best. Say yes, take a chance, and sometimes it's terrific and sometimes it's not.

I don't need to be made to look evil. I can do that on my own.

Improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing. That's a kind of paradoxical thing about improvising.

Yeah, well I've always played comedy. My background is musical comedy theatre and that's really where my training is. As an actor, that's my training.

I never know when I am being funny, and the other way too. I don't think you can think about that. I don't think you can try to be funny. Some people are just funny.

My own way of thinking is very conservative, very linear and not particularly imaginative, but if I look for things in different places, sometimes things happen.

Also for me it was different because I play a lot of villains and in this one I play a dad and I play a good guy, basically. He's the Secretary of the Treasury. I never had a job like that.

I try not to worry about things I can't do anything about.

The thing about cooking is it's so interesting to watch. I don't know why, but if you go to somebody's house and they're making something, they usually say interesting things while they're cooking.

When videotape came so a lot of movies that I do have a kind of afterlife in video. Things where movies that I do would come and go; they still come and go but you can go rent them and see them on TV.

I love spaghetti. And I like to cook spaghetti. And I used to eat it every day. I weighed thirty pounds more than I do now. You can't - you can't do that.

I think that sometimes when they see me in a movie they expect me to be something nasty. I mean, I play a lot of villains and you show up and they think maybe... That's why it's good to defy expectations sometimes.

I play disturbed people a lot, but always with a bit of distance or tongue-in-cheek. Most of the villains I play are essentially harmless.