Doing theater makes you feel like a real actor.

I ain't afraid of germs, man. And I ain't afraid of getting sick.

It's nice to get the feedback from a theater audience. It's a gas.

We are our children's first teachers.

There's a lot of stuff that's not good that's touted as being good.

I'm not dyeing my hair and trying to pretend I'm 40. That's not going to work for me.

I try to stay in shape a little bit, but I don't obsess about it.

I think of myself as being a relatively intelligent man who is open to a lot of different things and I think that questioning our purpose in life and the meaning of existence is something that we all go through at some point.

Mine were informal mentors. They were all in my working life.

I really don't know that I'm iconic. I don't even know that people think I'm cool.

When I think of Othello, I think of a poet-warrior. Let me say that again - a romantic warrior. And I think I have those qualities in common with him.

Paulo Coelho's 'The Alchemist' means a lot to me.

It's a huge blessing to know you've done something that has affected people the way 'The Matrix' has. It's like, there's 'Star Wars,' and then there's 'The Matrix.' It's cool to be a part of that.

Having 50 to 60 years on the planet should give you a sense of how to master the way you look and live your life.

I learned tolerance at a very early age.

We don't really see a lot of war movies about the people that are left behind, dealing with the deaths of those who serve and the sacrifices they make.

I don't believe in acting teachers for me, so it's God's joke that he gave me a best friend who's an acting teacher.

I always want to read the script and know everything and at least understand the context of the world that you're in and why you're there and all that stuff. It's good to know something. I like to know, but I've never been one of these, 'Just show me my stuff,' no, I like to know what the whole picture is so I can understand how I fit into it.

Special effects are characters. Special effects are essential elements. Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they aren't there.

As an actor, Coppola trained me. That was my training ground.

I didn't have much of a childhood, but that's O.K. I have a livelihood.

I can't remember a picture that has expressed black attitudes and personal relationships as vividly as we've done in 'Cadence.'

It's funny, a lot of people think I take myself seriously because I come off so serious sometimes. But it's not that I take myself seriously, I take what I do seriously.

As a movie star, you get good tables at restaurants.

I didn't want to be a big star. I wanted to be a really good actor.

My vocation is I do what I do. I'm an actor; that's what I do.

I've played a lot of bad guys, 'cause that was the only work I could get. People saw my face and went 'oooh'.

If you're playing a real person, then you want to do a certain amount of research, but that's only going to be so useful to you. Each role requires a different kind of approach to get ready.

I actually had the opportunity to stand at the lectern in the Supreme Court and face the justices, which was really a powerful thing for me.

Acting and philanthropy are braided together. I've tried to seek out things that speak not just specifically to the community that created me, but that speak in a way that's universal and all of humanity celebrates.

I certainly believe that being in contact with one's spirit and nurturing one's spirit is as important as nurturing one's body and mind.

I have taken care of my gift, and because I've taken care of my gift, I feel like I've been continually and constantly blessed to get to do wonderful things.

As a man of colour, I've spent my life asking people to see me for who I am. With Obama in the White House, it feels like people have finally caught up to where I've been most of my life.

I carry a lot of feminine energy as well as masculine energy, and that's the hit that people are getting. That vulnerable thing is not what we assume with black males. You get it, and then they cease to become scary. They become human. You cease to have a bogeyman.

If you asked someone who was a Maori about how they felt about how they were treated in Australia or New Zealand, you'll get an answer. They'll have something to tell you. And you might not like what you hear.

I think everyone is very surprised at how 'Matrix' has become the pop culture phenomenon that it is.

I play characters. I don't think I really have a persona per se. I don't play the same guy every time. I show up, you don't know what I'm gonna do. I like it that way. I've intentionally tried to do it that way. I think that's what's interesting.

'Apocalypse Now' was my craziest experience ever. I was 14 years old, and I'd lied about my age to get the role. I haven't had another film top it.

I have a man cave somewhere in California - a totally undisclosed location where manly things occur. There are motorcycles, there are secret doors and passageways. Women are welcome, but they must knock.

I believe in my children. I believe in human beings. I believe in the goodness that is in human beings. I believe in many, many things that I cannot prove. I believe that there's the world of the seen and the world of the unseen.

You know, whatever happens between the two of us that's created when we come together as actors is not something I think we can explain.

I came up around people who took acting seriously, who cared about acting, cared about the theater and, in the '70s, made movies that said something that mattered. I came up with those people, and I was a kid. Their ethos and credo became mine.

My mother is quite a woman. She would push me, and when I got tired of her pushing, I'd say: 'Leave me alone. Don't push so much.'

When I first read 'Boyz,' I cried. It could have been about some kids in Warsaw, Poland. I knew it was good, but I had no idea what it would do to me.

I think any city that does the Olympics takes on the world and has to grow and has to kind of assimilate all sorts of folks.

John Wick is not a guy that asks for help, so when he goes to somebody for help, whoever that is, you know he's a serious cat.

It's always a collective group of people coming together to oppose those things which are fundamentally contrary to our basic humanity.

If you like rock and roll, if you like rhythm and blues, if you like jazz, if you like hip-hop, you might be black-ish.

It's very difficult to set a film in one setting without giving the audience some intensity and some relief.

'The Fugitive Kind,' 'Rope,' 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' - I watched all these as a way of reminding myself that you can do a movie based on a play. You can do a movie that stays in one place for a long stretch.