I don't look good in tights. I know that.
— Michael Douglas
'King of California' was just, I thought, a really great, fresh, original kind of script. I loved the tone, the mix of tragedy, comedy, and drama, and that it was a good part.
The studios basically, besides developing some material, their strength is distribution. Distribution in any other business is a cost that you incur. You know, in a trucking business, you eat it. In a film business, distribution is a profit center.
The so-called 'last golden age,' in the 1970s, most of those movies were independent films.
All the pictures I do are contemporary. I've sort of discovered I haven't really been into science fiction or period pictures. And so, in that vein, psychological thrillers play a big part.
Celebrity gets you access to world leaders.
I've always liked Tina Turner.
I never really look at my movies.
I've never been one to carefully calculate my career decisions, to sit on the outside looking in. I go with my passion and what moves me.
Learning patience was not an easy lesson.
When you've accomplished a certain amount in your career, you're not so focused on your ambitions.
I tell my kids they are going to live to over 100.
Chemotherapy takes its toll; the more you keep doing it, you lose your energy, and it gets more difficult to swallow.
The thing with cancer is that you want to get it as early as you can.
To me, Bermuda is a real family spot.
It took me too long to realise that if you go to a marriage counsellor to resolve problems, it's in his interest to keep the marriage going.
I love kids, and I love having had this second chance to have a family.
I've just kind of been used to carrying movies. I look back and I'm just used to being in every single scene in a lot of pictures.
Every empire eventually falls.
'Five Easy Pieces,' 'Easy Rider' - those are indie pictures; those were not studio pictures. They had relationships with studio distribution, but they were indies.
I think the quality of television, given the amount of time you have, how short you have, is proportionally so much better than most movies.
I had a great stepfather.
The Cold War's end pushed disarmament down most leaders' agendas. It's a sophisticated issue, which I think is one reason why it is not so hands-on to many people. It's not visceral. It's not like a starving child.
When I was working on pictures with my father, there were a couple leading ladies to whom I wish I'd expressed how I felt rather than being too cool or too shy.
I have hardly ever worked with the same director twice. But when you have worked with a director before, you understand his behavior.
There is something about seeing rhinos and lions running free that excites you. It's not that you feel afraid; it's more like you're liberated by seeing them.
Kids know. They know everything. I would err on the side of pretty much sharing everything.
My memories of Las Vegas were all with my father when I was, like, a teenager. He was best friends with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, and we'd come up and see the shows and go backstage afterwards and have dinner together. It was one of my first educations about stars and how they really are back stage.
I think sometimes in relationships, ladies like having a man who takes care of them, nurtures them. If you can't find it in a man your own age, you find it in somebody who is older.
I haven't played a lot of nice guys.
Of course it's important to make mistakes, as long as you grow from them.
Cancer has shown me what family is. It showed me a love that I never knew really existed.
I have nothing against her, and in fact I'm very fond of my first wife. But we should have ended that marriage eight or 10 years earlier.
I thought I could never be the actor Dad was, so I avoided it for a while.
With 'Black Rain,' I spent a lot of time with homicide detectives, and I spent a lot of time with different brokers on 'Wall Street.' It helps get the rhythm of the piece and the tone, and how overplayed or underplayed it might be. That's also the magic of movies: You get to hang out and live these different lives.
My mother is Bermudan, so I had a lot of memories when I was a kid, used to go down to Bermuda a lot.
'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' which my father had tried to get made for six, seven years, and I for four, was turned down by every studio. Every studio in the world had passed on it.
I've been dying to do a Marvel picture for so long.
I was undeclared. I was in my third year of school. They said you have to decide upon a major, and my father was an actor. My mother was an actress. So, I thought theater might be the way to go.
Capitalism is part of our system, but it's not for the faint of heart.
The people who work in Wall Street still look up to Gordon Gekko. He's sort of a guru.
'Wall Street' was a very important movie for me in terms of my career. I won an Oscar, and then the film 'Fatal Attraction' came right after it.
If your work isn't exciting, doesn't stir the emotions, where's the challenge? Where's the progress if you always play it safe?
Like a lovely orchid, or anything else that's nurtured, marriage prospers and grows, but if it's ignored, it withers.
Sometimes we spend more efforts with people that are strangers in terms of making an impression than the person that's closest to us. And you just gotta remember not to take for granted that person that's closest to you.
I've always worked hard and played hard, and I'm sure I'll be cleaning up my act in the future.
Liberace was a lovely guy.
I've taken blame about being a bad father - if being a bad father is working your butt off trying to create a career at one time.
I went into rehab to save my marriage, but I wound up saving myself.
My daughter is a horseback rider, so I try to watch her ride; we take holidays together.
