I came to New York to be an actor and I became a film producer first.

But I remember feeling as a producer I felt like the guy who called the caterer and got the band; I had to work the party while everybody else was having a good time.

On every movie I've done as a director, I look at the producers and having done it, I don't envy them, at all.

In the '80s, I can't say that Amy and I were aware of an independent film community. We could only get a certain amount of money for our pictures, which made them low budget movies, but they were distributed through studios.

As a director, I've been able to combine with what I've learned as an actor and as a producer: it melds quite nicely into what I feel like I should have been doing all along.

Every movie is wildly different. So many of the problems are the same, but they take on different guises.

I've always been schizophrenic; I've never been interested in limiting myself.

I'm in five guilds; that's a lot of dues to pay. So I have to keep on working.

And I like being able to go back and forth, and I don't really care if it's a small budget or big budget or studio or independent, as long as it's got a story that's compelling and there's enough money to make the picture.

But at the same time, never having final cut before, I really learned an interesting thing for any studio executive who is reading this: that if a director has final cut, it's actually easier and more interesting to listen to notes.

It struck me that working digitally with a small crew, I could lay out a general plan for Famous and hope for mistakes which would create something more than satire and something less than truthful reality.

I only got to be able to act, because I gave myself a job as a producer.

My hunger and desperation, being an actor, an out of work actor - my memory of that is as fresh as an open wound.

I met Steve McQueen once. Well, met isn't really the right word.

I'm being told it saves money to shoot in Toronto, because of tax benefits, the crews are cheaper, but what I save in the bottom line, I lose in a million other ways.

New York means so much to people. If you're inclined to leave the nest, New York is where most people think they have to go, and it's been that way since the first skyscraper.

I came to New York to be an actor and I became a film producer first.

I think we were the first picture to cut on Final Cut Pro. So we were the guinea pigs, because we got a deal on the system. But with that comes all sorts of technological problems I couldn't begin to describe.

If movies are set in New York, they really should be shot in New York.

Although there was a screenplay, the actors never knew what questions I was going to ask them, and all of my character's voice-over narration and scenes were added after the fact.

I produced six movies with Amy Robinson since the very early '80s.

Documentaries have always inspired me in narrative filmmaking.

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.

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

Oh, well, in Los Angeles everybody is an actor, or a producer, or a writer, or a director, or an agent, or... So everybody understands the hours.

I didn't want to be an actor.