One of the first lessons you learn as an actor is to listen.

One of the other things I think that I've been able to do in my life, is to listen well.

I think that you can't make a movie without a script. But you also can't make movies without actors. You also can't make movies without technicians. And there has to be just one person in charge of everybody, and to me that one person is the director.

The first thing I can really tell you is I really love the work.

You have to really work with someone who you think is going to be a collaborator, who you think understands what you want to do with this movie and how you want to do it.

So I've had really great assistant directors for my last seven movies.

There are two things I will never do in my life. I will never climb Mount Everest, and I will never work with Val Kilmer again. There isn't enough money in the world.

I've found that the more experts you have on a movie, the less control the director has.

I think all great actors - and I don't classify myself as one of them, incidentally - but I think all great actors listen well and I've learned that from a lot of the very good actors with whom I've worked - to really listen to what people say.

There are so many effects and so many things that are done digitally now that it's so hard for the director to really control the process, because there are more and more experts that come in.

I look at actors very closely. It's not an accident when the actors excel.

To do that I try and keep myself in pretty good shape physically and I try to lead my life in such a way that I'll be able to be as strong at the end of the movie as I am in the beginning.

The first assistant director is just so important that the choice of that person is critical to the movie.

It's very eclectic, the way one chooses subjects in the movie business, especially in the commercial movie business. You need to develop material yourself or material is presented to you as an assignment to direct.

The importance of the assistant director cannot be overemphasized.

But I really am very active in the choice of the line producer with the producer of record and the distributing company, because I've had some terrible, terrible experiences with some line producers, particularly in cable.

Casting is 65 percent of directing.

The first thing is that we're being attacked by both the Writers Guild and the Producers Guild. Both of these groups are trying to diminish the importance and strength of the director. They're trying to do it through both frontal and side attacks.

If you don't cast well, you can be in real trouble.

First, speaking for myself, I don't want to ever be in a position where I'm telling other directors how to make movies, because I don't think it's any of my business.

The accolades usually come when you're dead or too old to get a job.

If you cast the picture correctly, you have a whole lot of leeway. You can make mistakes in other aspects but pull it off with the right actors.

I feel that my job is to create an atmosphere where creative people can do their best work.

Historically the director has been the key creative element in a film and we must maintain that. We must protect that, in spite of the fact that there is new technology that's continually trying to erode that.

I really, really love directing films.

One of the first lessons you learn as an actor is to listen.

And I kind of feel that I have a responsibility to the people that invest their time and money with me to show up on the set every day and do the best of which I am capable.

I think I've made some pretty decent films in the '80s and '90s.

Then I usually leave the choice of the second assistant director and any other assistant directors to the first assistant director, who will choose because he or she is responsible for the conduct and the efficiency of the second assistant directors.

I sought Ben Affleck because I needed an everyman for this role. Ben appeals to men and women. He gives you a sense of intelligence, the notion of a guy who can think on his feet.

I mean, this whole digital revolution is really eroding the director's importance on a movie because, number one, just from a practical standpoint, with floppy disks and the ability to put all of the film onto a disk, more people have access to the movie.

I have gotten to a point in my life where I don't want to have dinner with someone I don't like.

A disk unbeknownst to the director can go to the producer in another city or in another office and that producer can edit behind the director's back much easier than in the old days. Since these dailies are now put on videotape, more kinds of people have access to dailies.

And in Hollywood, you know, everyone is an expert. Most of them are expert editors. They can't direct, they can't write, they can't act, but, by God, they all think they can edit.

The accolades usually come when you're dead or too old to get a job

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.