It`s probably fair to say I have taken myself too seriously on some jobs. I`m sure I`m more guilty of being difficult than I`d like to remember. I don`t regret my desires; I`ve regretted the way I would communicate my desires. Maybe I`ve lost a job because of some rumor, I doubt it. But nobody good that I`ve worked with has ever said anything negative about me, because we`ve never had a negative experience. By good, I mean directors who do their homework, people that are passionate, crazy, never sleep, and do like I do and just go after it.
Mark Twain is a voice of truth and a voice of equality and a voice of tolerance. Which means he is a voice of love.
It hurts. I miss my kids. I miss my kids in so many ways that I can`t explain.
I can safely say that no one who has ever won an Oscar didn't want to win an Oscar.
I'm a character actor, but I look like a leading man.
I have never taken my career seriously. My only ambition was to grow as an actor.
Life is precious, and when someone dies it's an opportunity to realise how precious it is. My brother drowned when I was 17. He was 15. I think I grew from that. My father didn't. It really crushed him.
So it`s always helped me to have a foundation, an ideal to strive for and goals. It`s hard for me to be disciplined and plan things.
Mark Twain was an artist working at the highest level. He wrote a book, his masterpiece, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, that put America on the world stage for literature. It's almost as if, if you start reading that book as a racist, you cannot finish it and still be a racist.
I learned a long time ago that place matters to me, on many levels, and maybe more than it should, but it is generally counter-productive for me to resist it.
I never had a business plan. I did, actually - I'm lying. My business plan was to get lucky, and I did; that was great. And then my second business plan was to get lucky again, and there, I faltered.
Well I sure had been looking for a comedy for years without any success.
Most films made about the future acquiesce toward death, and I don't want to be told how to define my future.
I fell in love with the land and with the very old fashioned idea of leaving a physical legacy for my children. A stunning place, with a magnificent forest of trees, and a magnificent river.
Gregory Peck was so charismatic. I saw a woman fall down - fall down! - when she saw him in a restaurant. And Brando. We were in London, and by then he was about 380 pounds. There was a gorgeous waitress, and off he went, in direct competition with me for this young girl's attention, speaking French, making her blush.
There are lots of actors who are awful people, but nobody talks about them being awful because they've made billions.
It's the persona that makes you a leading actor. A leading actor has something extra that's fun to watch. But it isn't usually about acting.
There are some directors I should have worked with. I`d like to have worked with Robert Altman - I turned him down a couple of times when I was younger. My thing now is if it`s a good director I`ll never say no - I`m just gonna say yes from now on.
I went to public school in L.A., so I felt like I'd been in a coma for three years. I woke up, and moved to New York.
There are only three reasons to do a movie: the cast, the director, the role. Like I say, you live in a minute of screen time, but to prepare for the minute takes much more than a day. You'd better be excited about what those moments are, even if they're the hardest moments. Or the smallest.
There's nothing good about divorce.
I just don't think I've ever been comfortable at public functions and selling myself as an entity.
If you play Mark Twain and he's not funny, you are definitely not playing Mark Twain. That was the biggest challenge, in some ways. Writing and performing jokes that can come out of that brilliant delivery system he constructed: the friendly, avuncular truth-teller.
Where [a]can you trust your own thoughts and your own intentions? Everywhere, hopefully, but it isn't always that easy. Sometimes, you have to help yourself along.
I'm not just an actor born in L.A. I was born in the Griffith Park Hospital. You can't get any more clichéd than that.
