I wasn't at all sure I could make that sort of leap into that sort of comic book reality.

When I tested for Billy Budd, I had that kind of confidence that comes with the certainty that you're not going to get something. I was very rough around the edges.

I've never wanted to become a politician, an interior decorator, I've never wanted to speculate and make a load of money. I just wanted this.

In my youth I dreamed of being an illustrator.

I wasn't at all sure I could make that sort of leap into that sort of comic book reality.

What I wanted more than anything was a long career.

I work primarily for the camera-it's not something I really talk about a lot, but it's part of the way I am as a movie actor. The camera is my girl, as it were.

I was very disappointed that so much of the work I did on The Haunted Mansion didn't arrive in the final cut.

Although you have some films that are a real bummer, there's always a film that comes up where it's just heaven.

It wasn't until I saw James Dean that I began to think that maybe I could actually do this. Movies didn't have to be just this fantasy with this impossibly handsome guy.

I have always had this energy, which I think of as overdrive.

My favorite film is Gene Tierney and Tyrone Power in The Razor's Edge.

In the case of Elektra I really wasn't sure I could pull it off. There were so many intellectual leaps. My character, Stick, is blind, but he can see better than most people. So I had trouble kind of finding the logic.

Peter Ustinov was the first really positive influence in my career. He was real and he bore witness to it. The things he said to you, he lived them.

He's Soderbergh, we're working for him. It doesn't matter what he's doing; we'll see it at the premiere.

A lot of newspapers say, Terence Stamp is playing himself and we're as bored as he is.

With Fellini, the fear dropped out of my work because it was such a happy experience... hanging out with Fellini, having pasta on the set with Fellini, and going out with Fellini!

From the very first movie I ever made to the current time, there have been times between action and cut when I've sensed some kind of new dimension that I haven't been familiar with before.

A lot of people only see me as villains.

I've been doing Tai Chi on and off for 20 years. The fundamentals of all martial arts are the same.

At this point, it's either for fun or it's for money. I don't take movies that I don't really like.

As a boy I believed I could make myself invisible. I'm not sure that I ever could, but I certainly had the ability to pass unnoticed.

Unless I try, I'm never really going to be at ease with myself.

All actors are incredibly insecure.

It's such a performance to bring stuff into America. It's a great luxury when I am in England.

My star was kind of fading towards the end of the '60s and suddenly I got this call from Fellini, who just appeared to kind of love me!

I have to be stretched in some way. There's not enough things that come my way that I fancy.

A lot of young directors, they're not confident; they're not open to the emotional level of the scene.

I try to ground most of my characters in reality somehow. That's kind of what I bring to the table.

Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

We must admit with humility that, while number is purely a product of our minds, space has a reality outside our minds, so that we cannot completely prescribe its properties a priori.

Sometimes you get caught up in what's going on around you. The reality is that you are just a regular person. At some point, the career will be over, the bright lights turn off. That can come back to haunt you if you're not just a regular guy.

It's about the power of design and the power of the human spirit. It's above paying anybody to do something stupid for money like reality television does - like ambushing people.

I mean, the reality is unemployment today - over 14 million Americans are unemployed. That's exactly what it was a year ago. I mean, this - the American people know we can't borrow and spend and bail our way back to a growing economy.

There is only one admirable form of the imagination: the imagination that is so intense that it creates a new reality, that it makes things happen.

And then, I suppose, there's also a cinematic reality on top of that. Because it was extremely difficult to keep tabs on, it was quite confusing acting that.

In reality, the most important things happen when you don't look for them.

What I would have liked to do on that show was play a secretary of state who has huge personal business interests throughout the world. That, to me, seems to be more in synch with reality.

From a reality perspective, I'm sure part of that is true, but this is the largest blackout in U.S. history. If that is not a signal that we have got a problem that needs to be fixed, I don't know what is.

It's one of the things that looks good written down, but the reality is that you think about the pieces you're doing and try to bear in mind everyone in the audience.

I found a religion that blended scientific reason with spiritual reality in a unifying faith far removed from the headlines of violence, destruction and terrorism.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

In reality, for me every role is completely different.

Some theists in evolutionary science acquiesce to these tacit rules and retain a personal faith while accepting a thoroughly naturalistic picture of physical reality.

Religion, you know, enters very deep; in reality it is the deepest impression I have in speaking to people, that they are or that they are not of my religion.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

You can close your eyes to reality but not to memories.

Sometimes I read a script and it's obvious from early on that it's one where the suspension of disbelief has to develop strongly from page one. Some are more reality-based.