Actor Quotes

Human beings are glorious and preposterous characters.

Cormac McCarthy's language is perfect. He is in my view the greatest living American prose stylist.

Characters with no integrity are just as interesting as characters with lots of integrity.

As an actor to watch an audience of people howl together in a single mind as a result of work you've done together with friends is a privilege.

As an actor I want to do as many takes as I can. I wanna shoot the scene... or shoot the shot 'til they make me quit.

All my life I've had the privilege to make my living with my imagination, and the most important thing has been to see my creative life grow. I was educated to do that and have lived accordingly.

The world's not a very comfortable place if you have a nightmare to face.

If military movies were automatically successful we'd make nothing but military movies. But seriously, patriotism is one thing that all Americans have in common.

As a child of West Texas, I identify with Hispanic culture every bit as much as I do North American culture.

Normal people with normal problems can be hilarious.

Ethnic stereotypes are boring and stressful and sometimes criminal. It's just not a good way to think. It's non-thinking. It's stupid and destructive.

I always told my children when they whined... Only the boring are bored.

Acting is fun for me and it doesn't really matter how, whether it's hard work or easy work, it's always fun.

Kindness and politeness are not overrated at all. They're underused.

If you ever have the good fortune to meet Tippi Hedren, she's an amazing woman. You can't quite believe she is the age she is.

I've got to tell you, I've played real characters before and people always bring up this word 'impersonation,' and I'm never entirely sure what it means.

I would absolutely like to play more leading roles. There's no philosophy - well, the only philosophy, I suppose, is to try and do different things.

I work best when a little scared, when there's so much more than the lines to think about.

I went to meet Joe Johnston, the director, and he's charming. I've been very lucky. Most of the directors I've worked with are charming. But Joe's a particularly charming man, and he showed me lots of designs and, rather memorably, welcomed me to the Marvel Universe.

I was a fan of Hitchcock, but more importantly than that, he is such an inscrutable man, and a very carefully inscrutable man. He apparently was blank-faced with a calm and controlled presence. I was immediately anxious and thought, 'How am I going to get behind that?'

I think it will be, as always, interesting to compare different portrayals of Hitchcock. I'm very honored that I'm playing the same part as Anthony Hopkins.

I teach for the Book Trust, which promotes reading and writing with children.

I studied Hitchcock a little bit at University and knew the famous story about the Birds - that he'd tortured Tippi for a day using real birds. I had no idea that it was a five-day onslaught and that it was the tip of an iceberg that carried on through to another film.

I still don't feel I know Hitchcock at all. I find that the more one looks, the more elusive he becomes. But my admiration for Hitchcock the filmmaker remains undiminished. He is a giant of the cinema and the darkness in him informs his cinematic language. You can't separate one from the other.

I often get sent scripts about little men in big situations. There's a comic element to it, which is forces stacked against this little guy, and how is he going to defeat them?

I heard about the project over a year before we began. My American agent said, 'Oh, you might want to read 'In Cold Blood' because they're talking about you for Capote, but the script's with Johnny Depp and Sean Penn at the moment.' So, these things take their time to dribble down the food chain.

I had to change the shape of my own voice. It was quite hard to pull off and so once I had it, I stayed in Hitchcock's voice all day on set.

I get plenty of time to re-engage with the world I'm trying to depict, so I'm not always living in these parallel worlds.

I don't know if it's harder but when you're playing a real person you want to honor their memory - even if they're a criminal or someone that the public loathed. That can be challenging.

I do always feel very proud and flattered by being asked to be a part of American productions playing American characters.