A lot of the bad guys I've played just haven't had much dimension to them.

I create each character as an individual, coming from a certain place, sounding a certain way, having been introduced to things a certain way.

I've always been interested in science fiction.

I've worked with a lot of wooden actors in my day, but Pinocchio is the best.

I had hair down to my shoulders, a beard and mustache. I was crude and rude.

I was offered the Gene Hackman role in 'The Poseidon Adventure' four times, and I turned it down four times. I didn't want to do that movie. I called it the upside down boat.

There are not many A-list directors who get to make the movies they want to make. I know two: Woody Allen and Tim Burton. Two different textures, but both get to do what they want, and that's rare.

Ageism is something that does exist.

I look for roles where there is some kind of an arc to the story.

I've always felt, pound for pound, I'm one of the best guys around; but you get stuck in people's eyes in a certain way, and it takes an imaginative director who will look at you and realize you can play different kinds of parts because you are an actor.

The real good comedians, like Chaplin, would make you laugh and a second later, cry.

They made a fatal mistake in doing 'Psycho' again. Why do that? Why revisit something that stands for itself?

Jimmy Dean was my best friend.

A lot of the time with an independent production, you go onto the set, and you rehearse it in front of the crew, and at that point, the cinematographer takes over. You start accommodating the camera instead of the camera accommodating you.

Sergio Leone came to see me when I was doing 'Mission Impossible.' He wanted me to do 'A Fistful of Dollars.' I turned him down. I didn't want to get stuck as a stoic Western movie star.

Nobody knew me. They just knew that I was the guy from 'Mission: Impossible.'

Agents have enormous power that studios relinquished to them. The studios, when I first came to Hollywood, that's where the power was.

When someone is there for you, has your back, that's somebody to pay attention to because that's a friend.

Everything that has happened to me is of value to me. As painful as certain things are, and have been, and were, there's a use for those things in my life and in my work.

I always treat each take as a rehearsal for the next take. That way you can find stuff and keep adding and playing until they tell me to stop.

I'm very proud of Space 1999. Its success paved the way for other sci-fi shows to follow. My hope is that the DVD release will help it reach a new generation of fans.

People think I'm a very serious actor, which I am. But you know, if you don't have a sense of humor doing what I do, you perish.

It's good to make people laugh.

The Italian tough guys, dey talk real deep like dis down in dere chests... while the Irish speak way high-ah, up here in their heads.

I felt I knew Lugosi. Like him, I had worked for good directors and terrible directors.

I played a wide variety of roles.

I think we've all done things we're not particularly fond of. Everybody goes through it and comes out the other end, and goes on with his life as if it didn't happen.

The winners shouldn't necessarily win, and the losers shouldn't necessarily lose.

A film is not going to change the world. But if it can do that to individuals on an individual level, I think it's a magnificent movie.

Of course, I remember the Disney 'Pinocchio.' I was a little kid then... It was very instructive. Little boys who don't behave wind up in lots of trouble.

I'm certainly not going to play any of Matt Damon's roles in the future. But he will eventually grow into mine, since he'll be around for a long time.

Pictures are packaged and cast by agents.

I can take scripts directly to actors. Agents don't like to hear that.

You have to be crazy to do theater.

They were like little palaces: all rococo or art deco. You'd walk in off those hot streets into a nice, air-cooled theater, and you'd spend all day watching Cagney or Jimmy Stewart. It cost all of 17 cents.

The modern cineplexes are mundane, dull boxes. But 'The Majestic' pays tribute to the movie palaces that made people feel like royalty. It honors a time when pictures helped Americans get through grim periods like the blacklist and the war.

I was being groomed to be the theatrical caricaturist. And I know if I got that job, I'd never quit. So I quit. I knew I wanted to go into the theater... I wanted to act.

I trained as an actor with Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan, and Harold Clurman, and those guys set a very high bar.

The average scene in a film, you have to shoot it 15, 20 times. That means you got to laugh or cry 15, 20 times.

I was very thin, exceedingly thin. If you look at 'North By Northwest,' you'll get a clue.

I'm not speaking, you know, egocentrically at all, but I do have a very wide range.

An actor knows much more about a character than the character knows about himself.

In film, there are always things that could conceivably create artificiality in any performance.

Dialogue is what a character's willing to share and reveal to another character, and the 90% they aren't willing to share is what I do for a living.

People do not necessarily reveal what is going on - only bad actors do.

Bad actors try to cry, and good actors try not to. Bad actors try to laugh, and good actors try not to.

I run the 'Actors Studio' on the West Cost. I'm artistic director of that.

I've turned down a lot of roles. Some of them made stars out of the people. I have no regrets.

I always believed that all it would take was a decent role. I felt like a pinch hitter with a leaden bat: that if I got a chance, I could hit a home run.

The year I got into The Actors Studio, Steve McQueen and I were the only two accepted that whole year.