I had great qualms about playing a man who was living. I've never met Walt McCandless, and I never will.
— William Hurt
I'm coming from the notion that acting is an art. It is not a business. It is about building characters, not about selling personalities.
I've made a couple of films that were a little too wide and non-specific - like 'The Doctor.'
I didn't study interviews. I studied acting.
Play is play, fun is fun, and work is work. They're different. I work hard; even if it's supposed to be fun for someone else, it's work for me.
I like to work. I'm glad; I'm privileged to have work.
Where did I study? I went to P.S. 6. I went to Collegiate, Middlesex, Tufts, Juilliard.
I don't put the truth in a cage. I try to find a way to release it.
I'm an actor. I play roles in films and theaters. I don't act out, and I don't play people.
The thrill of acting is the discovery part, so it all changes, but it has to change in a way that fits what is written. You can't just wander off and get interested in your own tangent.
I haven't planned a reaction on anything... If you do, you've screwed up.
When you are a kid, you are beset by fears, and you think, 'I'll solve the fear by living forever and becoming a movie star.'
You get older, and people start passing away. And so if you're lucky - my mom died very young, for instance, and I have friends who died very young - but the point being that, I think if you're awake, you know you're going to pass on. And that the real treasure in life is the long term - relationships that you really value.
Fame... it's been a challenge, let's put it that way. It's a privilege and a responsibility, and I'm not sure I carried the responsibility well at times, which is embarrassing. And I've had to look and be disappointed in myself occasionally for how I behaved in some circumstances.
I am not a famous person at home - I'm just a guy here. I'm a father, I'm a companion, I'm a human being. I am not a public figure in my house; I am not a celebrity. I am not a famous person to myself - I am just a guy.
I was very lucky when I was a kid - I travelled a lot and spent a lot of time in Africa, Asia and Europe. I also chant in Sanskrit.
You cut off the capacity for grief in your life, and you cut off the joy at the same time. They both come up through the same tunnel. You don't have one without the other.
Celebrity is a pathological sickness of the culture. Narcissists on screen being consumed by narcissists off-screen.
I don't want my children to have to wade through the crap to get to the cream, you know. I want them to be aware that I struggled to live with and tell my truth, and that it was a decent thing.
We get so intellectual that we forget that we're physical creatures.
You can only sit on the frustration of wanting to express something for so long.
If you don't exercise, you don't stay strong. I like to work with talented people.
There's fear or faith. If you're living by fear, then you're always looking for security. If you're living by faith, then you're always looking for freedom.
Post-adolescence reaches usually into the late 30s.
I live in the county where my mother was born and buried.
I'm not there to tailor the role to me: I'm there to tailor me to the role. That guarantees me something, a precious thing, which is creativity. I'm guaranteed that I will have a creative experience, because I will go to it, not demand that it comes to me.
I have never worked with anyone who I hold in higher esteem than Chris Menges. He's an absolute, bona fide, authentic artist.
The point is that there are challenges within techniques. When you differentiate in technique, you challenge yourself; you ask yourself the same question in a new way.
Rage with panache.
Every single second of extra time to work with other actors has definitely always, for me, paid off for the film. For the project. Every single extra heartbeat you could get, mutually considering the scene, was of benefit.
The irony is that the more specific you are in the portrayal of character, the more like other people you are. In the same way, the more you think about how alone you are in this life, you realise how much a brother and sister everyone else is.
I don't have any artifacts of my profession in my house; the Oscar is in storage.
The funnel of deep feeling and profound satisfaction in life comes from the capacity to feel.
The enemies of acting are mood and attitude and other general homogenized disruptive entities. Whereas acting is about action - doing - and unless you can figure out a way to craft in an imaginative reality to which you don't submit, you're going to be out of control. You'll flip out. The job is to be surprised.
I have a way of synthesizing. That's what I would encourage any young person to do: take in the ideas, the conflicts, and the world. Watch and listen and live before you go public.
I'm never happier than when I'm with my family.
It's been a long comeback. Things were pretty dark for me. But I have a faith now, and it saves my day. I was angry with God for a long time because I was unhappy with me. I hadn't learned to make the distinction between God and my parents. But there's a peace now. In the end, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.
I generally try to think of what it is I want to express and then find a way of expressing it.
I'm not going to party. I'm going to go do something that will make me break a sweat.
Defeating fear is not a light switch. For most of us, it's daily work.
I grew up in the South Pacific. Basically, my brothers were Guamanian. I spoke words of Guamanian long before I spoke words of English, and so I've seen a lot. You know, I've traveled in places where people don't have the benefits of American life. And so I've seen a lot of stuff.
My first cousin, by the way, on my father's mother side was John Marshall Harlan, who was a Supreme Court justice, as was his grandson. And I think a lot of my fight and my work to struggle for fairness and the techniques of theater and in subject matter probably stems in some way from some sense I have of his issues in life.
Woody Allen asked me to improv once. I said no.
The achievement is appreciation. Your ability to be surprised and awed by beauty!
I am constantly asked, 'What's the difference between acting in the theater and acting in film?' The only answer I can give is the space - you adapt to the space. But acting is acting.
For as privileged an actor as I have been, TV as a standard is short shrift. They have to do it so quickly that they don't stop and take a look. They just shoot. So that's one of the reasons I typically stay away from it. I think art is an act of consideration, and if you're not considering, I don't think you're really doing mankind a favor.
My greatest offering is my concept. It isn't my face.
The problem with Google is you have 360 degrees of omnidirectional information on a linear basis, but the algorithms for irony and ambiguity are not there. And those are the algorithms of wisdom.
I am just as comfortable in Britain and France as I am in America... but nowhere is perfect.
We'd like to prearrange our life on all levels. We'd prefer it to be scripted. But it's not.
