I run the Actor's Studio on the West Coast, and one of the things I say all the time to the people I teach - many of whom are acting teachers - is that an actor needs to make choices that make him present.

Human beings are fascinating with religion and stories about not dying. Or dying and being brought back to life. I think it's just part of our make up.

I'm a big believer that an actor should be able to pick up any piece of material and act it, the way a good musician can.

My best stuff as a teacher was always to find the problems within each individual actor, and I'll suggest things that I know that particular actor will have difficulty with.

I always say, if I tell you a joke right now and it's funny, you laugh. Now, we set the lights, and I tell you the joke again, it's hard to find it funny the second time.

To really have craft, you must be able to repeat something as one has to do in films.

My technique has always been to include all the periphery around me.

All an audience wants to believe is that what's going on is happening for the first time.

Every young actor wants to do 'Hamlet' on the West End. Why? Because they can bring something to it.

I've spent a lot of time playing roles that didn't really challenge me. I suppose every actor feels that way.

My father was an Austrian, and he brought some Torahs over to this country, ancient Torahs that were slipped out of Germany.

I love to see lack of clarity in a performance as well as clarity, as well as trust, as well as the kinds of things that human beings go through. I love to see spontaneity and 'inevitability.' How it gets there is going to shock the hell out of me, but it will get there somehow.

'Mission' was a mind game. The ideal mission was getting in and getting out without anyone ever knowing we were there.

For my generation of actors, it was about the theatre. Television didn't exist. Coaxial cable didn't exist.

I studied with Strasberg, Elia Kazan. They raised the bar. They weren't easy to please, and they made you achieve the best you could do. That's what a teacher does: he infuses you with passion for something.

Teachers are important in this world.

I like a character that is still alive and is necessarily thinking, and either grows or diminishes or whatever.

I don't like to do what I call 'the grunters' - a character who sits at a table and grunts and young people make fun of. I turn a lot of those down.

As a young actor, I was working much more readily and being offered more things.

No one tries to cry. You try not to cry. No one tries to laugh. You try not to laugh.

You can't perish because of your own feelings; you have to embrace those things as an actor because it's part of your palette.

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

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.

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