I felt I knew Lugosi. Like him, I had worked for good directors and terrible directors.

I played a wide variety of roles.

I think we've all done things we're not particularly fond of. Everybody goes through it and comes out the other end, and goes on with his life as if it didn't happen.

The winners shouldn't necessarily win, and the losers shouldn't necessarily lose.

A film is not going to change the world. But if it can do that to individuals on an individual level, I think it's a magnificent movie.

Of course, I remember the Disney 'Pinocchio.' I was a little kid then... It was very instructive. Little boys who don't behave wind up in lots of trouble.

I'm certainly not going to play any of Matt Damon's roles in the future. But he will eventually grow into mine, since he'll be around for a long time.

Pictures are packaged and cast by agents.

I can take scripts directly to actors. Agents don't like to hear that.

You have to be crazy to do theater.

They were like little palaces: all rococo or art deco. You'd walk in off those hot streets into a nice, air-cooled theater, and you'd spend all day watching Cagney or Jimmy Stewart. It cost all of 17 cents.

The modern cineplexes are mundane, dull boxes. But 'The Majestic' pays tribute to the movie palaces that made people feel like royalty. It honors a time when pictures helped Americans get through grim periods like the blacklist and the war.

I was being groomed to be the theatrical caricaturist. And I know if I got that job, I'd never quit. So I quit. I knew I wanted to go into the theater... I wanted to act.

I trained as an actor with Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan, and Harold Clurman, and those guys set a very high bar.

The average scene in a film, you have to shoot it 15, 20 times. That means you got to laugh or cry 15, 20 times.

I was very thin, exceedingly thin. If you look at 'North By Northwest,' you'll get a clue.

I'm not speaking, you know, egocentrically at all, but I do have a very wide range.

An actor knows much more about a character than the character knows about himself.

In film, there are always things that could conceivably create artificiality in any performance.

Dialogue is what a character's willing to share and reveal to another character, and the 90% they aren't willing to share is what I do for a living.

People do not necessarily reveal what is going on - only bad actors do.

Bad actors try to cry, and good actors try not to. Bad actors try to laugh, and good actors try not to.

I run the 'Actors Studio' on the West Cost. I'm artistic director of that.

I've turned down a lot of roles. Some of them made stars out of the people. I have no regrets.

I always believed that all it would take was a decent role. I felt like a pinch hitter with a leaden bat: that if I got a chance, I could hit a home run.

The year I got into The Actors Studio, Steve McQueen and I were the only two accepted that whole year.

You can't perish because of your own feelings; you have to embrace those things as an actor because it's part of your palette.

No one tries to cry. You try not to cry. No one tries to laugh. You try not to laugh.

As a young actor, I was working much more readily and being offered more things.

I don't like to do what I call 'the grunters' - a character who sits at a table and grunts and young people make fun of. I turn a lot of those down.

I like a character that is still alive and is necessarily thinking, and either grows or diminishes or whatever.

Teachers are important in this world.

I studied with Strasberg, Elia Kazan. They raised the bar. They weren't easy to please, and they made you achieve the best you could do. That's what a teacher does: he infuses you with passion for something.

For my generation of actors, it was about the theatre. Television didn't exist. Coaxial cable didn't exist.

'Mission' was a mind game. The ideal mission was getting in and getting out without anyone ever knowing we were there.

I love to see lack of clarity in a performance as well as clarity, as well as trust, as well as the kinds of things that human beings go through. I love to see spontaneity and 'inevitability.' How it gets there is going to shock the hell out of me, but it will get there somehow.

My father was an Austrian, and he brought some Torahs over to this country, ancient Torahs that were slipped out of Germany.

I've spent a lot of time playing roles that didn't really challenge me. I suppose every actor feels that way.

Every young actor wants to do 'Hamlet' on the West End. Why? Because they can bring something to it.

All an audience wants to believe is that what's going on is happening for the first time.

My technique has always been to include all the periphery around me.

To really have craft, you must be able to repeat something as one has to do in films.

I always say, if I tell you a joke right now and it's funny, you laugh. Now, we set the lights, and I tell you the joke again, it's hard to find it funny the second time.

My best stuff as a teacher was always to find the problems within each individual actor, and I'll suggest things that I know that particular actor will have difficulty with.

I'm a big believer that an actor should be able to pick up any piece of material and act it, the way a good musician can.

Human beings are fascinating with religion and stories about not dying. Or dying and being brought back to life. I think it's just part of our make up.

I run the Actor's Studio on the West Coast, and one of the things I say all the time to the people I teach - many of whom are acting teachers - is that an actor needs to make choices that make him present.

As a Jew, there's a need to keep that atrocity alive. There were Catholics and gypsies and homosexuals who died in the Holocaust, too. It's amazing that people allowed this slaughter to take place. There's a need to make these films and reiterate it happened.

I don't think villains think they are villains.

The way a character sounds is so important to how you're going to play him.