I guess nobody can teach you the knack, or whatever it is, that helps you come to life on stage.
— Christopher Lloyd
The time and preparation before a play is something I really value, and it's something I learned in New York.
Time travel is a fantasy we all have. The 'Back to the Future' series really exploits that wish.
I'm not too picky. I'm not waiting, sitting around for the ideal and perfect role. I like to work, so I try to make the best of whatever opportunity comes up.
'Cuckoo's Nest' was my first film, and I had wanted to do film for some time, but somehow I had not clicked. I would go in for interviews or readings, and I never had the sense that I was anywhere near what they were looking for.
I'm often asked, 'What was, for you, your greatest film experience?' And it always comes back to 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' aside from being a film that really handled subject matter in such a brilliant, brilliant way.
I turned down a film that was offered to me in the very early '80s, a Scorsese film. That probably wasn't a good career move.
We live in an era now where every episode is reviewed 80 different times on the Internet by periodicals you've never even heard of.
In point of fact, I'm not sure there are too many comedies with laugh tracks anymore. Most of what you hear is live studio audience laughing as a show is filmed. If this prompts you to wonder who those actual human beings are who are laughing at some of this stuff, that is a mystification I share.
I tend to avoid things like award shows and panels and interviews, not remotely because I feel I'm above them or wish to cultivate the image of the intriguing recluse. I'm just not very good at them.
A sign that negotiations were handled well on both sides is that everybody probably feels a little bit like they didn't get what they wanted.
I enjoy doing complicated or peculiar people.
Doc Brown had a feverous imagination. He was constantly coming up with new ways and solutions to various issues, and time travel was one of them. I was just very inspired by being able to portray somebody of that sort. He's a man of tremendous energy and excitement about discovery.
Some people have quick retention. I'm not one of those.
'Cuckoo's Nest' came along, and I was cast, and that was great, but it was my first film, so I felt like I was kind of walking around on the set as Walk-On A.
Every role I get is always a challenge. I can read a script and say, 'Oh, I can do that!' and then when I start working on it, I suddenly realize that I had no idea what I was getting into. Then I have to really work hard!
I don't like to repeat myself.
I've worked a lot with kids before. They can be very, very difficult, just because they're kids.
I get asked a lot what the key is to creating a hit show, and I have a standard answer: Do everything right, and then get lucky 10 ways.
On 'Frasier,' a network executive once suggested that one week we have John Lithgow play Frasier and Kelsey Grammar play Lithgow's role on '3rd Rock From the Sun;' I've been deeply afraid of the idea of a crossover ever since.
A lot of things you just stumble into: relationships or ways of putting characters opposite one another that really worked. So then it's not always so much about imitating other people, but imitating yourself, at least in your thinking.
I was a slow starter. I didn't really make any dazzling impressions. But I don't really regret that because I learned a lot along the way. I always kept busy - I found my way my way, and I'm happy about it.
I've always been fascinated by real scientists - Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and so many others - how they've come up with solutions to very complicated problems that nobody else can seem to figure out.
As long as I can keep remembering the lines and getting to the locations, I want to keep working as long as I can. I love it.
I was already committed to a play back in New York about Hans Christian Andersen, where Colleen Dewhurst was going to play my mother. I was excited about that, and I got this script called 'Back to the Future,' and I thumbed through it. Didn't pay a hell of a lot of attention.
'Hamlet' was the first movie I saw. In 1948, my mother said, 'I'm going to take you to see 'Hamlet' with Laurence Olivier.' She was worried about taking me to it because she wasn't sure I was old enough to understand it or to maybe be adversely affected by it, but I got recordings of it and memorized all the soliloquies.
Eric Stoltz was a very good actor.
I like being busy.
There is certainly a higher percentage of wit in British comedy than in American comedy. What always tickles me is the way in which people try to use their intellect to get themselves out of tricky situations but never quite manage to do so - much to their enormous embarrassment.
I sense from people that they get frustrated with me for not being out and about. But I guess I'm a shy boy.
A picador is the guy in a bullfight who helps make sure the matador doesn't get killed by distracting the bull. That's what TV writing is. You're just distracting the bull long enough to stick around for the next set of commercials.
