'Hamlet' was the first movie I saw. In 1948, my mother said, 'I'm going to take you to see 'Hamlet' with Laurence Olivier.' She was worried about taking me to it because she wasn't sure I was old enough to understand it or to maybe be adversely affected by it, but I got recordings of it and memorized all the soliloquies.

I'm often asked, 'What was, for you, your greatest film experience?' And it always comes back to 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' aside from being a film that really handled subject matter in such a brilliant, brilliant way.

Eric Stoltz was a very good actor.

I turned down a film that was offered to me in the very early '80s, a Scorsese film. That probably wasn't a good career move.

I've worked a lot with kids before. They can be very, very difficult, just because they're kids.

I like being busy.

I like being busy.

There is certainly a higher percentage of wit in British comedy than in American comedy. What always tickles me is the way in which people try to use their intellect to get themselves out of tricky situations but never quite manage to do so - much to their enormous embarrassment.

On 'Frasier,' a network executive once suggested that one week we have John Lithgow play Frasier and Kelsey Grammar play Lithgow's role on '3rd Rock From the Sun;' I've been deeply afraid of the idea of a crossover ever since.

I tend to avoid things like award shows and panels and interviews, not remotely because I feel I'm above them or wish to cultivate the image of the intriguing recluse. I'm just not very good at them.

A lot of things you just stumble into: relationships or ways of putting characters opposite one another that really worked. So then it's not always so much about imitating other people, but imitating yourself, at least in your thinking.

I loved doing Judge Doom in 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit.' I'm constantly running into people who saw that movie when they were kids, and it absolutely horrified them.

I don't know exactly how I end up with some of these roles. It mystifies me sometimes, but I am a fan of sci-fi. I love being taken into a strange world, and when it's told with imagination and credibility, I love being taken on that trip. I always have.

I find it difficult to work if I don't know the lines, you know, and not just knowing - they're second nature to me. Then, whatever happens in the performance when you're actually doing it, you're not going to go off. You're going to retain all of that. So I like to have my lines.

I feel that I have been very fortunate and had the opportunity to play some wonderful roles and movies and worked with some great talent.

I had an attitude about some work, like television sitcoms. It was selling your soul.

I've always been fascinated by real scientists - Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and so many others - how they've come up with solutions to very complicated problems that nobody else can seem to figure out.

I enjoy doing complicated or peculiar people.

A sign that negotiations were handled well on both sides is that everybody probably feels a little bit like they didn't get what they wanted.

We live in an era now where every episode is reviewed 80 different times on the Internet by periodicals you've never even heard of.

I'm persistent. In the early '60s, when I first started making the rounds in New York for theater work, I became more and more enraged every time I had an interview or audition that went nowhere, and became more determined. I haven't lost that.

In point of fact, I'm not sure there are too many comedies with laugh tracks anymore. Most of what you hear is live studio audience laughing as a show is filmed. If this prompts you to wonder who those actual human beings are who are laughing at some of this stuff, that is a mystification I share.

A picador is the guy in a bullfight who helps make sure the matador doesn't get killed by distracting the bull. That's what TV writing is. You're just distracting the bull long enough to stick around for the next set of commercials.

I don't like to repeat myself.