I'm the sort of actor who likes to talk about what we're going to do.

The play is on top of me all the time, and I am constantly thinking about it. Even when I leave the theatre, I'll mumble the lines to myself or think about the way the character walks or holds himself.

What can I tell you about things like Circus of Horrors except that I get killed by the bear?

I don't really know how many films I've done, and I don't look at this as a race that I necessarily want to win. Nor is it a race that I want to stop running.

All the real work is done in the rehearsal period.

I'm hardly physically right for the hero parts, now am I?

I believe you can frighten people without showing their heads caved-in.

I'm the sort of actor who likes to talk about what we're going to do.

It's gotten to the point where it's big news when I don't do a horror film.

The idea of dying and coming back is what makes the Halloween films work.

Continental directors, as opposed to British and American, tend to be somewhat high-handed in their approach.

The process of creation goes on all the time. When I get through, I feel I know what the character will do in every situation. But the building up of the part is not mechanical or deliberate. It grows out of the text.

At this point in my career, it doesn't bother me much that I'm probably hopelessly typecast. I like to work, and horror films definitely keep me working.

I do not use any set methods, not even The Method. The character after all is in the lines.

I was offered a choice of a flat salary up front or a percentage of the film's future earnings. I took the up front money. Nobody could have figured what Halloween would ultimately become.

The process of building a part doesn't really stop.

Loomis has always felt himself responsible for the fact that he did not stop Michael when he first murdered his sister, and so he's got that guilt to live with.

John Carpenter created the idea of Halloween, so his vision remains the most focused and intelligently directed of the series. The directors that have followed have kept the original intent of the concept.

I loved working with Jamie Lee Curtis, and I felt she was a wonderful actress even that early in her career.

I do think the story in Halloween 5 is a bit stupid, and there's a lot more blood. They're obviously going to take the Halloween series in a different direction.

I think people have a tendency to read into more than there is.

At the end of the first Halloween, when I shot 6 bullets into Michael Myers, John Carpenter said, Let's get a shot of you looking out of the window and seeing no one lying there.

The first Halloween was very well made. The second one was also well made, though I didn't like it as well as the first one. The third one had nothing to do with the series at all and perhaps shouldn't have been made at all.

John and I had a few meetings about what direction the sequel should take. I made some real insane suggestions. True to what you'd expect, he ignored them all and just picked up Halloween II where the original left off.

I am not one of those actors who believes he has to live the part he is playing. I can turn it on and off.

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.

Reality is, I'm an actor and an entertainer, and I really wouldn't know what to do with another profession.

I still feel like I'm trying to make it. It's hard to shed the struggling actor thing.

Only a great actor finds the difficulties of the actor's art infinite.

Follow the wisdom of the great actor, James Cagney, you hit your mark, you look the other guy in the eye, and you tell the truth.

I was always a character actor. I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood.

In other words, I wouldn't like to be an actor if I could only be real. I like to get wild, behaviorally wild, and it's crazy to think of any form where it's just one way.