"The average celebrity meets, in one year, ten times the amount of people that the average person meets in his entire life."

"I'm content with the fact that I made a decent effort. That's what I've always worried about: that I wouldn't try hard enough."

"I wanted to be the best actor possible. I worked very hard at the craft of it."

"I've spent more time playing golf than anything else the last 18 years. Just wanted to be an 80s-shooter. Got there, too."

"Played tennis for years. But you can't improve at tennis after you're 50. You get to be in your 40s, and suddenly you're a doubles player."

"I'm not a power person. I like everyone to be on an equal footing."

"The camera photographs what's there."

"I don't think many people have a very good understanding of leisure and the importance it plays in our lives."

"If men are honest, everything they do and everywhere they go is for a chance to see women."

"If you get an impulse in a scene, no matter how wrong it seems, follow the impulse. It might be something and if it ain't - take two!"

"I've never been able to say I've been influenced by a list of artists I like because I like thousands and thousands and I've been influenced in some way by all of them."

"I sort of understood that when I first started: that you shouldn't repeat a success. Very often you're going to, and maybe the first time you do, it works. And you love it. But then you're trapped."

"I learned a long time ago in Hollywood that the only person I should vote for is myself."

"Frankly, I got into the movies because I like the movies a lot."

"Acting is everybody's favorite second job."

"Early on, if I was alone two three nights in a row, I'd start writing poems about suicide."

"Well, I'm not going to sit here and pretend that I haven't been a rogue most of my life."

"In my last year of school, I was voted Class Optimist and Class Pessimist. Looking back, I realize I was only half right."

"Well, a girlfriend once told me never to fight with anybody you don't love."

"I like to not care that much about criticism, but I do care about it."

"In this industry, there are only two ways up the ladder. Rung by rung or claw your way to the top. It's sure been tough on my nails."

"When I was in high school, I earned the pimple award and every other gross-out award."

"I'll tell you one thing: Don't ever give anybody your best advice, because they're not going to follow it."

"I never had a policy about marriage. I got married very young in life and I always think in all relationships, I've always thought that it's counterproductive to have a theory on that."

"I know I can act. There aren't too many other jobs I know how to do."

"I have a lot of vanity."

"Because you know, down deep in my heart, when all is said and done, I still live under the illusion that basically people think of me as an up-and-coming young actor."

"I don't want people to know what I'm actually like. It's not good for an actor."

"I always knew there wasn't going to be anybody to help me and emotionally support me, that whatever I did I'd have to do on my own."

"I worry from the moment I take a job. I worry about how I'm going to do it, if I can do it... Then I walk on set and the director says, 'Roll', and all of a sudden, all of it disappears and it's all happening, and I relax, and I'm doing what I do, and I'm not even thinking about it."

"I think that's what distinguishes Schmidt, really. In the movies now, so much of what is appealing to an audience is the dramatic or has to do with science fiction, and Schmidt is simply human. There's no melodrama; there's no device, It's just about a human being."

"When I come up against a director who has a concept that I don't agree with, or maybe I just haven't thought of it or whatever, I'd be more prone to go with them than my own because I want to be out of control as an actor, I want them to have the control, otherwise it's going to become predictably my work, and that's not fun."