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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

You have to be crazy to do theater.

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

Pictures are packaged and cast by agents.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I played a wide variety of roles.

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

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.