I am not a long-run actor. I admire actors who can do that.

I am not a long-run actor. I admire actors who can do that.

I'd forgotten I'd done the anime called Spirited Away, the English version of a Japanese film.

High school music teachers... nobody makes a living off it.

Very often when I go in to meet for movies or pilots, I'm put on videotape. I hate the notion that that tape is going to sit on a shelf and never get better.

Kids now are so used to surround sound and the power in theater speakers, that the concert hall is a disappointment to them.

I've played Lear three times, I would love to do it again.

Something happens to us all when we experience something as a unit that doesn't occur when we're on our couches or holding our little portable DVD players.

Every time I hear, Cut. Print, something cold and electrical goes off in my head, because I'm never going to change that film.

It's rare to be treated like a friend you haven't met in a Hollywood meeting.

It's really important to stay engaged and involved in the character.

You hear the same work by different orchestras, different conductors, violinists, pianists, singers, and slowly, the work reveals itself and begins to live deeper in you.

I will never master this craft. Orchestras are very, very forthcoming with me.

If it's right and true, it's listened to and accommodated.

Family means no one gets left behind or forgotten.

Because I don't take money, I'll go anywhere and do a benefit concert with almost any orchestra.

People are nice enough, but you can hear the giant tick of the second hand. People are so harried.

I love pulling people into concert halls who might not otherwise go and getting their ears tuned.

What we have to get clear to kids is that when you offer your stillness and open yourself to the experience of music, it pays you back more than you give.

A lot affects the outcome. It boils down to scheduling and the commitment of the network.

Very often, I don't make it through moments of recording because it is genuinely funny and absolutely ridiculous that a 60-year-old grown man is making these noises.

My father, who died a few years ago, was a good, simple, very honest man. His faith and affection for his family was just unassailable, without question.

Writing is hard work. Generating stories that catch people's attention and holding it are very difficult.

I had a meeting in LA in which they took a really overstuffed hour and a half. It was as close to old Hollywood as I remembered it in the last 20 years.

We lament the speed of our society and the lack of depth and the nature of disposable information.

There are a couple of roles I haven't played that I want to. I would love to play Shiloh.

I am certainly not a mainstream religious man.

In television you go in with this operating system that it is a crapshoot.

When something really extreme happens, you have to find a way to embrace that and include it in how you think about the character. Sometimes it's not easy.

Fun can happen on the interior. Nobody knows about it, but there are fireworks going on inside your spirit when you hear a great orchestra playing great music.

The ebulliently sharp mind of 'White Christmas' director Walter Bobbie made me tremble and strive in the same breath. The deceptively 'simple' dialogue of David Ives, asking every actor to just. say. it. Float it on the breeze; it doesn't need 'explanation,' just energy and truth.

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.

When I decided I wanted to be an actor, I said I wanted to work with quality actors and directors.

There are roles I want that my agency might not want me to do because of the subject matter or whatever. Or there are roles that people won't bring to me because they don't think I'll do it. And that is a big strain because an actor wants to act.