The theater is a tough place. It's not cushioned the way it is in film and television.

The word diva to me means doing something supernatural with something natural.

A show is exhausting when it stinks. It's exhausting when you have to work overtime to make something work.

I learned a long time ago from David Mamet to wipe your feet at the door, get it out on stage and then go about your life.

I played the tuba in high school. I wanted to be a member of the marching band. I thought, what can I play that has the most effect? What can I play to get people to laugh?

I think Madonna is a wonderful performer.

We're not show-business people. We have a life.

A well-rounded performer will listen to all kinds of music. I like classical, Middle Eastern, and rock a lot.

I just love chickens.

To be nominated was enough, but when I won I the Tony I just felt relief.

Smile at a stranger. See what happens.

I just create, that's what I do.

I'm totally Italian, but I'm not a diva. If you could see the way I'm dressed in daily life, that's not a diva. Appearances are so not important to me.

The theater is a tough place. It's not cushioned the way it is in film and television.

Anybody that goes to the theater, I think we're all misfits, so we ended up on stage or in the audience.

All my career, I've said this: Critics and producers think audiences want actors that only present the silhouette and hit the points in the silhouette. What I do is too dangerous.

I am in musical theatre, but it isn't necessarily what I listen to in my leisure time, do you know what I mean?

I don't listen to the contemporary pop artists. They all sound alike, anyway.

I knew when I was a kid that I had a Broadway voice. I wanted to be a rocker, because I grew up in that era of transistor radios at the beach.

I know what it means to have a leading part, and I know what it means to have a featured part.

I love what I do, and I love the audience, and I love the fact that I get to do it, and I love, I love our craft very, very, much, and it's a noble craft. We have a responsibility to it, and to the audience, and to the playwright, and to the message. I won't ever care less.

I think that Stevie Nicks is one of the greats. Steve Nicks and Grace Slick and Janis Joplin have the real rock voices, to me.

I'd love to do situation comedy - it's the best job in show business.

I'll tell you what I think in general about people who want to make their Broadway debut that are not trained stage actors. Don't they know, Broadway ain't for sissies? It is a tough gig. You are responsible, physically, mentally, emotionally, for eight shows a week, at the top of your game. It's not easy.

In America, it stands out, because it's raw, it's big, it's emotional. My face is raw, big and emotional. It didn't work for the longest time.

My favorite band was The Band, and nobody compares in my mind with The Band.

The only thing we are as actors are messengers. That's all we are. Correct? We are delivering the playwright's intention through the concept of the director. And I come on stage; if I feel confident in the role, then I give it away.

It's exhausting when you have to work overtime to make something work.

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.

I was lucky enough to occasionally break out of that racist situation that prevails in the Hollywood film production community. But it was racist then and it will always be that way. It will never be otherwise.

'Batman' took 10 months to film, and by the time I stopped working on it, it took a long time before my English accent came out again. I was actually having to try for it.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

I mean when the play was on in New York I was starting to get film offers coming through, and since the film's come out I get offered more than I used to, but it happens incrementally.

I think it would be very boring dramatically to have a film where everybody was a lawyer or doctor and had no faults. To me, the most important thing is to be truthful.

I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.

The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film.

If he didn't fall in love he would have never come back near the end of the film. Because, what man is going to dishonor himself so that he comes back in front of the man that took a woman away from him... and warns her to save her life?

Robert Altman's Nashville is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

I have a movie coming out called Spun, which will be at the Toronto Film Fest.

Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I'll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.

And when you see it the first time you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when you want to go home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, somewhere toward that spot you were at before.

A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.

My advice to young film-makers is this: don't follow trends, start them!

The whole aspect of cinema and film festivals should be a moment to come together and celebrate art and humanity. It would be a shame if there was such a divide.