I trained as a theater actor and you had a bare stage and you had to pretend, one prop and you are in the middle of 8th Ave. and traffic is just going by.

My goal as an actor has always been to reach a level where I can find a lot of interesting work, and I think I'm at that point now. The Oscar has given me a lot of recognition.

Before I was ever in high school, I had dark circles under my eyes. The rumor was I was a junkie. I have dark circles under my eyes, deal with it.

I've liked most of the films that I've been in and those are the kinds of films I like to see.

To be honest with you, I'd rather not be working. When you work, there are all sorts of deadlines and pressures. I like to do one thing and take my time to do the other one.

There are a lot of good actresses out there.

I'm not Jack Nicholson. I'm not Brando. But I do mumble.

There's a lot of Latinos right now, a lot of filmmakers and writers that are Latin too.

You have to kill to survive. People have been doing it forever. I eat meat, and I eat fish. If I were on a deserted island I would need that to survive.

I trained as a theater actor and you had a bare stage and you had to pretend, one prop and you are in the middle of 8th Ave. and traffic is just going by.

When some people get parts, they feel they can now relax, but for me it was always the opposite. Sometimes before I do a movie or before I act out a scene, I may not sleep well the night before. If I don't know what the scene is about, I might get all worked up.

Hopefully, I can play both sides of the fence. That's probably what winning the Oscar gives me, the chance to do something with a studio and do other things that I really want to do.

I don't think I could be a foot soldier. I don't know if I could take orders too good. I'm a little lazy.

Am I getting better at making choices? Well, I think I might be getting better at reading scripts.

Because actors don't get to pick movies; movies pick the actors.

Before I was ever in high school, I had dark circles under my eyes.

I don't see the world completely in black and white. Sometimes I do.

I get more choices of things, projects, which is a blessing and a curse. I can only do one at a time. Sometimes you don't know which way to go.

I guess I rooted for the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

I think that the Oscar gives you some kind of guts or something, it gives you the illusion that you can do it. It's good for business.

I used to play basketball and I was pretty competitive, but I was never a bad loser. I never got angry. For me it was always about doing my best and devoting myself to a challenge.

I'm a fan myself, so when a fan does something that might be strange, I understand it.

I'm a slow reader.

I'm just an actor.

I'm not saying I'm a writer, but I've been in movies for a long time, and I think I could write a script for a movie.

It depends, because sometimes an action role can be very demanding, and sometimes a dialogue-driven character can be very demanding, and vice versa. It depends.

It's funny, but when I arrived in California to start college I was much more interested in becoming a surfer and cruise along in life from one beach to the next. I didn't plan out any huge career for myself.

My grandfather was a lawyer, my dad was a lawyer, my mum was a lawyer, I got an uncle who's a lawyer, I got cousins that are lawyers.

The very first things that I did, even in theater, were bad guys. They are meaty roles for the most part. With the bad guy you have more freedom to experiment and go further out than with a good guy.

To me the thing with 'Grease' was that it was the first movie that as a kid I wanted to get up and do what they were doing.

Villains used to always die in the end. Even the monsters. Frankenstein, Dracula - you'd kill them with a stake. Now the nightmare guy comes back.

When you start to become a movie star it's easy to believe that you are Superman. That can fool you. That's why I prefer not to pay much attention to fame.

You might get some serial killers who are born with a chip missing, but for the most part I don't think anyone is born bad.

My favorite actor is Wallace Beery.

I've been a very lucky actor.

I don't think I could be happy as an actor if there was a tyrant on the set.

When I was starting to get noticed as an actor in the 1970s for something other than the third cowboy on the right who ended up dying in every movie or episode, Burt Reynolds was the biggest star in the world.

Most parts that can be played by one actor can equally well be played by another, but not this.

I think, frankly, that I'm a better director than I was an actor.

I knew an actor's career goes up and down and back up again. Your standing in this business can't be your whole identity; otherwise, you're doomed.

I don't think any actor feels comfortable watching themselves in movies. You must be very narcissistic. The problem with your own opinion of yourself is that contrary to the normal spectators, when you watch a film you are in, you only watch yourself.

I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful.

I never dreamed about being an actor, because that was out of reach. Coming from a small town that was big in farming, and also big in clothing factories, you don't dream about being a professional football player or an actor.

My goal was always to be recognized as a good actor but no one was interested in that, simply because society just wants to warm towards your appearance. This is the great blemish of society.

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

It was very natural for me to want to disappear into dark theater, I am really very shy. That is something that people never seem to fully grasp because, when you are an actor, you are meant to be an exhibitionist.

I think that I've still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I'd like to work on that.

And once you cease to be a real person, you stop being a good actor.