I'm an actor... I do a job and I go home. Why are you interested in me? You don't ask a truck driver about his job.

It is a dark, dark world. If you're going to be in a dark world, I can't think of any better one to be in. I still think I'm very lucky to be in it.

You know, all writers are vampires and they'll look around and they watch you when you're not even thinking they're watching you and they'll slip stuff in.

Both my mother and father were very supportive of any career move any of us wanted to make.

I just don't think I'm that interesting. I don't think what I have to say is that interesting. To hear me go blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, who... cares?

I've been very lucky, considering what I look like and what I do.

I'm an actor... I do a job and I go home. Why are you interested in me? You don't ask a truck driver about his job.

I lost 30 pounds to play my character in 'The Mexican', but people don't take to skinny mafia men, and I don't feel right when I'm thin.

All writers are vampires.

I was voted best-looking kid in high school but, as you can see, things changed. I used to say I was a 260 pound Woody Allen. You can make that 295 pound now.

'The Sopranos' all came down to the writing. I wouldn't have been on for as long as I was if the writing weren't so good.

Actors will say, 'My character wouldn't say that.' Who said it was your character?

Good writing will bring you to places you don't even expect sometimes.

I dabbled a little bit in acting in high school, and then I forgot about it completely. And then at about 25 I went to a class. I don't think anybody in my family thought it was an intelligent choice. I don't think anybody thought I'd succeed, which is understandable. I think they were just happy that I was doing something.

I don't think I will do a Mafia character again. I want to get away from the violence a little bit, because it is starting to bother me personally.

I find it hard to relax. I live in New York.

I have nothing but respect for HBO.

I like dark places.

I like idiotic comedies.

I love hearing people laugh.

I want nothing to do with privilege.

I'd love to live in New Orleans. I love the freedom of it - for good and for bad.

I'm not a big, three-hour-play, Ibsen-revival kind of man.

Part of the fun of acting is the research, finding out about other people.

People don't know and they shouldn't know that you work incredibly hard as an actor.

Putting somebody else's pants on and pretending to be somebody else is occasionally, as you grow older, horrifying.

Standing in public in other people's clothes, pretending to be someone else. It's a strange way for a grown man to make a living.

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.