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.

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.

My interests were in fantasy more than comics growing up.

You can also make explicit certain social problems which, again, would be prejudged or not encountered at all in real life, because people have set up defenses against it. Fantasy allows you to get past defenses.

I love biomedical science, I love astronomy, and you can't really do much with those in a fantasy setting.

Fantasy is toxic: the private cruelty and the world war both have their start in the heated brain.

We in this Congress have a choice. The American people have a right to exercise a choice on this issue, as to whether our men and women will continue to fight and die in a war based on deception and fantasy, or to start bringing the troops home.

One fantasy is that I just do a Don Roos movie every year if that's possible. If he'd have me.

I mean, I don't know anything else that I would try to do, but it's a very frustrating thing to do, because you are trying to take what's a fantasy in your head and make it live through the minds of 200 people.

I think sex is very interesting for most people, but I'm interested in sex as a way of communication, I'm not that interested in the fantasy version of a sex scene.

There is no winning or losing, but rather the value is in the experience of imagining yourself as a character in whatever genre you're involved in, whether it's a fantasy game, the Wild West, secret agenst or whatever else. You get to sort of vicariously experience those things.

Plastic surgery and breast implants are fine for people who want that, if it makes them feel better about who they are. But, it makes these people, actors especially, fantasy figures for a fantasy world. Acting is about being real being honest.

Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.

I think I'll give it up, the fantasy is over, I wanted to play Spiderman, Peter Parker.

Fantasy is the only canvas large enough for me to paint on.

For the last 30 years our cinemas have been ruled by science fiction and horror. We've had some very good Fantasy films in that time period, but for my tastes I still haven't seen fantasy done to absolute perfection. That is the hope I have in this project.

The idea of it becomes a little freaky if you're dealing with someone who has trouble differentiating between fantasy and reality, but that's a concern no matter what kind of movie you're dealing with.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong.

I believed totally in the possibilities implied in the series. I never thought of it as fantasy. Far from it.

The minute I forget to balance reality with the fantasy, I'm going back to Virginia.

Even though my songs may sound very personal, to me most of them are fiction. It is a great way for me to be able to live a fantasy life as a writer because I get to be someone else, someplace else for three and a half minutes, just like the listener.

I absolutely adore working in the realms of fantasy.

In my sex fantasy, nobody ever loves me for my mind.