My life is really quite conservative. I've been married nearly 50 years. I don't have hobbies or children. I don't much care to travel. I've never had a big social life. I really just stay home, except when I go to work.

As an actor, I'm rather hit and miss; I throw a lot out there, and some of it works and some of it doesn't.

I have been in movies that I thought I wasn't very good in.

I think that a good movie creates its own world, and that world needn't refer to anything that's real. If it's consistent, if it's entertaining, if it's interesting, it justifies its being there.

I grew up in the '50s, in New York City, where television was born. There were 90 live shows every week, and they used a lot of kids. There were schools just for these kids. There was a whole world that doesn't exist anymore.

I've been married for 46 years, and I live in a nice house, my grass is always cut, I pay my bills, and my cat loves me!

The minute I start to talk about acting, I realize that I can't. You know, it's an abstract thing, a little bit mysterious even if you do it for a living.

Obviously an actor draws on his own experience.

By the time I was 7, I did walk-ons, catalogue modeling, you name it. In the Queens where I grew up, you didn't go bowling on Saturday; you went to dancing school.

I'm scared of everything. I think it's only sensible to be that way.

You hear about things happening to people - they slip in the bathtub, fall down the stairs, step off the curb in London because they think that the cars come the other way - and they die. You feel you want to die making an effort at something; you don't want to die in some unnecessary way.

I've never crashed a wedding. When I was a kid I, of course, used to crash parties. Crashing a wedding is difficult though because you have to have the suit, and you have to have information in case someone catches you. You have to know at least some names and something.

When I was a kid, my parents gave me piano lessons and guitar lessons for a while, but I was never very good at it. I have big, sort of awkward hands. It's hard to keep going when you don't get any better.

I don't carry lucky charms, but I believe in those things.

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

I remember that. I was talking to him and I said how great it would be if actors had a tail because I have animals and a tail is so expressive. On a cat you can tell everything. You can tell if they're annoyed. You can tell whether they're scared.

I don't like flying at the best of times. And as I get older, I like it less and less. I don't much like driving, either. I prefer to be driven. And, when I'm in London, I don't even like walking on the street. I can never get used to looking the right way when I cross the street.

The last time I did a movie that needed a horse, I said: 'If it moves, I'm out of here.' The worst thing is, they know when you're afraid and act up accordingly. I've had them run off on me. Horses I do not like.

Somebody said to me that I speak English almost like somebody for whom English is not their first language.

I'm not much of an analyzer or a psychologist.

Everybody has to be a little lucky, I think.

Because if I don't know my lines, I really don't know what I'm doing.

No, improvising is wonderful. But, the thing is that you cannot improvise unless you know exactly what you're doing.

No, but way before that, I've been doing little dances in movies for years. Yeah, that was an amazing chance. You know, at my age to be able to do a music dance video, very unusual.

One thing that's happened to me is I've been around a long time and I've played a lot of villains and so forth. I think it had to do with, well one thing is that I looked younger than I was for a long time. Now I think I'm suddenly starting to play people's father.

And I think that when I play these villains, maybe what is different is that the audience sees me play these and they know that that's Chris and he's having fun and he knows that and he knows that and you know that and everybody knows that.

I've made movies that we're very successful that we're a complete surprise, and I've made movies that I thought we're going to be very successful that, you know.

Also, I think there are huge reactions sometimes, which are also mysterious.

My favorite characters are the ones that are the most successful movies.

I live sort of in the country and I like that. It's very quiet, it's beautiful.

The best thing for me is, when I'm not working, is to be at home and to have a script or two scripts is better, and to be just walking around the house and just thinking about the lines.

I think early on I knew what I was going to do and it was based a lot on familiarity but it was also because I didn't have a lot of skills. There was nothing I wanted t be. I didn't want to be a doctor. I wanted to be in show business.

I think that if I had grown up and had been in show business and the movies twenty five, thirty years earlier, I think I would have made a lot more musical movies.

I've made three musical movies which is pretty good considering that not many are made but I was lucky in other ways. I came along when independent movies were starting to boom.

I think if you do something effectively whether you're the lover or the comic or the action guy or the villain like I play; movies are very expensive to make. Chances are you'll get asked to play that part again.

People think that my favorite roles to do are villains, but I find comedy to be the most challenging and rewarding.

Emotional power is maybe the most valuable thing that an actor can have.

Is typecasting really a problem?

I make movies that nobody will see. I've made movies that even I have never seen.

There's something dangerous about what's funny. Jarring and disconcerting. There is a connection between funny and scary.

My father was a lesson. He had his own bakery, and it was closed one day a week, but he would go anyway. He did it because he really loved his bakery. It wasn't a job.

I used to love Danish. My father used to make a Boston cream pie. You never see that anymore.

When you're onstage and you know you're bombing, that's very, very scary. Because you know you gotta keep going - you're bombing, but you can't stop. And you know that half an hour from now, you're still gonna be bombing. It takes a thick skin.

My life has been wonderful. Everybody has to be a little lucky, I think.

There probably aren't a lot of actors my age who tap dance.

I think I'm getting a little bit of Alzheimer's. Just a little.

I became an actor by accident. I suppose I figured since I was in musical comedy from the time I was a teenager, I suppose I figured that I'd always been in that world to some extent.

To be honest, I was never very ambitious. And I still am not.

It's what actors call a big, juicy part, when you're a leading man. I don't get a lot of those. I get a lot of supporting things.

My background is in musical comedy. I didn't know I was going to be an actor. But all my points of reference have to do with musical comedy and in being kind of a showoff.