It's nice to create a character, not just within two scenes, but within the journey of a whole movie. It's fun to do that.

Our morality is based on so many factors: of where we were born, who we were born to, what values were instilled in us, what values we chose, the way that our lives have shaped us. That dictates so much of what we assume is our morality, and also the culture, all of these things.

I started off thinking that I just needed one shot to prove myself, but then I realised that I was only going to learn about acting by doing it.

I remember the first time my mind was blown by an actor was Tim Curry, because I loved 'Clue' when I was a kid, and then I was watching the movie 'Legend,' and the Devil suddenly smiles, and I was like, 'It's the same guy!' It was a total Keyser Soeze moment.

Most actors, if you ask them if they play guitar, they'll say they played guitar for 20 years, but what they really mean is they've owned a guitar for 20 years.

Humans are mutants, everything's a mutant - things that evolve.

I always like teaser trailers because they don't give too much away, you know? They give just a flavor of what the thing is.

A lot of very successful businessmen share some of these sociopathic traits - a lack of empathy, seeing people as commodities, projecting an air of sincerity when everything is actually calculated.

The better I am at observing moments in life, the better I'll be at showing them in my acting.

I like being like a chameleon who transforms himself with each role.

I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

I'm a provincial. I live very much like a hermit: reading, listening to music, working in the cutting room, writing, commercial work - which doesn't take up that much time.

The ideal American type is perfectly expressed by the Protestant, individualist, anti-conformist, and this is the type that is in the process of disappearing. In reality there are few left.

I'm not a walking extra in a Chekhov play; I'm no Slavic gloom or Irish gloom.

If everyone worked with wide-angle lenses, I'd shoot all my films in 75mm, because I believe very strongly in the possibilities of the 75mm.

The only reason for doing a play is to make a statement about it, and by that I don't mean a conceit of the producer.

There's no biography so interesting as the one in which the biographer is present.

As a producer, sitting on the other side of the desk, I have never once had an agent go out on a limb for his client and fight for him. I've never heard one say, 'No, just a minute! This is the actor you should use.' They will always say, 'You don't like him? I've got somebody else.' They're totally spineless.

I'm one of those fellows so frightened of driving that I go 80 miles an hour - and the more frightened I get, the faster I go.

I'm never certain of a performance - my own or the other actors' - or the script or anything... But to me it seems there's only one place in the world the camera can be, and the decision usually comes immediately.

Look at the real prodigies, and I look like nothing compared to them.

When television came along, I'd already done more than 10 years of radio work and I thought everyone would want me. I sat around waiting for the phone to ring - and it didn't.

I feel I have to protect myself against things. So I'm pretty careful to lose most of them.

I have no great message to the world.