Earlier on in my career I felt that I had to hide behind a lot of different masks, and showboat ways of performing. Now, that's a lie. The less I have to hide, the less I have to act.

I spent a lot of years just learning my craft and falling down in front of the camera.

I'm a really huge fan of the old romantic comedies from the '30s and '40s... Huge fan. I love all that stuff.

I'm of the mind that life is a risk, every time you leave your house it's a risk, and I see no reason to go through life with my hands tied behind my back for any reason. I'd be foolish to let something stop me from doing what I love to do.

My dad was an entrepreneurial businessman, and maybe I got some of his ability.

I think what makes us human - is our interconnectedness among people. It's our ability to form and maintain relationships. It's the barometer by which we call ourselves human.

Some of the supporting roles that I've done as an actor, I took them because I knew that I would get to watch some of the leading guys in the movies, and also I'd get to work with them.

I'm interested in people that don't always do the right thing, its much more akin to what I know about life.

I still collect comics. I still have a great love and respect for the genre.

It's not that the film is violent, it's that people have an issue with violence right now.

To me, it's the kiss of death when you start winking at the audience as an actor. I just never liked it. I don't like it when we do monologues, looking into the character.

If I stay alert, then I can challenge myself, and by challenging myself, that helps me to stay alive and to hopefully take something away from the experience.

I'm interested in the impact my movies have on people and how it affects them, and what they like and what they don't like - and what they take away from it. What leaves an impression, you know?

Harrison Ford - one of my favorite actors - has a wonderful sense of character and depth and uniqueness to him, yet he's able to just deliver the lines without putting any English on it.

I just have a respect for my audience. That seems to be pretty logical.

I can't stand to see myself act. It just makes me cringe.

To stand there and do nothing on film is probably the hardest thing to do.

It's kind of true that they just start making the same movie over and over again. It's also true that the times dictate what kind of movies get made and what kind are not. So I'm always looking for something that's a little fresh and something that I haven't seen before.

Most of my career up until the last couple of years has basically been a training ground for me. Actors that came up in the '50s and '60s, they had the theater, and television was in its infancy.

I want to make movies that I want to see, and what I miss and I'm not seeing.

Earlier on in my career I felt that I had to hide behind a lot of different masks, and showboat ways of performing. Now, that's a lie. The less I have to hide, the less I have to act.

People lose people, we lose things in our life as we're constantly growing and changing. That's what life is is change, and a lot of that is loss. It's what you gain from that loss that makes life.

Great directors turn in mediocre work, and first-time directors turn in exceptional work. No matter how good a person can talk about what he wants, you never know. You just have to go with a good story and a script that you like and people that you like to work with.

I think all good drama is funny. All the best drama is ultimately very funny. Life is funny. You can't have any honest treatise on life without bumping into some humor.

Sharing the same vision for what's on the page is always a good idea. The director's job is to establish what that is and make sure that everyone sticks to it when it comes down to actually executing it. Establishing what the vision is and being able to stick to it is the job, and everyone should be on the same page going in.

Some days are more intense and quiet, and then other days, you feel more relaxed and are able to open up on set. It just depends on what you're doing that day. I like to imagine that all the choices you make during the day that you're doing a particular scene are going to feed into the creation of that scene.

We're in the doing business, or acting business and creating business. We're not in the results business, so we don't have any control over what the result is. My reward comes in the doing of it.

Conformity is painful. You know its too tight. Conformity leads to rebellion. So a desire for happiness is in direct conflict with a desire for freedom.

Conformity is painful. You know, it's too tight. Conformity leads to rebellion. So a desire for happiness is in direct conflict with a desire for freedom.

By Rice's own standards, the war was well underway by the time he took office. He was a war president the moment he took the oath. But did he act like one?

Under current law volunteers who are not working with an official nonprofit organization are not covered by the Volunteer Protection Act. Therefore, there are absolutely no legal protections for the average American who wishes to volunteer.

Commas in The New Yorker fall with the precision of knives in a circus act, outlining the victim.

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.

I knew I wanted to act, and I was really driven, so I kept going for it. We moved to L.A. full-time when I was 8 or 9.

Maybe I can't act, but I know the gimmicks. I studied acting all my life and know what's good for me.

I've done a lot of acting. I'm not saying I'm the greatest, but I'd love to act, I'd love to sing.

P.C. is just too Big Brother - telling me how I should act and feel.

Act well your part, there all the honour lies.

I'm a 7 o'clock act. My people want to go to a show, a dinner and then go home and go to bed.

For me, romance isn't an over-the-top act. It's someone offering to help and to support me. Or if that person thinks I'm making the wrong decision, he'll tell me. I want him to be honest, because being that honest takes a lot of guts.

I want more children but for the next three years I want to act.

I have to say that it's very few countries that are willing to look back at its past and apologize for its act, or make amends for its act, as the United States had one.

I think unleashing 3,000 smart bombs against the city of Baghdad in the first several days of the war... to me, if those were unleashed against the San Francisco Bay Area, I would call that an act of extreme terrorism.

I cannot sing, dance or act; what else would I be but a talk show host.

My kids act all the time and it's exactly what I used to do.

After the magical act accomplished by Joyce with Ulysses, perhaps we are getting away from it.

Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in, no one single decision can make life suddenly better or can turn history around for the good.

A marriage is no amusement but a solemn act, and generally a sad one.

I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.