An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.

An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.

I'd worship the ground you walked on if only you walked in a better neighborhood.

Happiness is working with Jack Lemmon.

It was hell at the time, but after it was over, it was wonderful.

Now, what is it which makes a scene interesting? If you see a man coming through a doorway, it means nothing. If you see him coming through a window - that is at once interesting.

What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films.

One's too many, and a hundred's not enough.

Hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.

If there's anything I hate more than being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously.

If you're going to tell people the truth, be funny or they'll kill you.

France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you can't tear the toilet paper.

My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?

He has Van Gogh's ear for music.

They've tried to manufacture other Marilyn Monroes and they will undoubtedly keep trying. But it won't work. She was an original.

Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.

I would rather sleep in a bathroom than in another hotel.

You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.

Hollywood didn't kill Marilyn Monroe, it's the Marilyn Monroes who are killing Hollywood.

France is the country where the money falls apart and you can't tear the toilet paper.

A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.

I've met a lot of hardboiled eggs in my time, but you're twenty minutes.

Don't be too clever for an audience. Make it obvious. Make the subtleties obvious also.

An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark - that is critical genius.

We are on the track of something absolutely mediocre.

If there's anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously.

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own instead of someone elses.

France is the only country where the money falls apart and you cant tear the toilet paper.

France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you cant tear the toilet paper.

Hindsight is always twenty twenty.

The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.

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.