If I don't believe in a role, I can't pull it off.

I would rather do many small roles on TV, stage or film than one blockbuster that made me rich but had no acting.

You can have a laugh in Los Angeles, or you can weep in Los Angeles, depending on your attitude towards it.

Insecurity, commonly regarded as a weakness in normal people, is the basic tool of the actor's trade.

It sounds ideal, a sort of beach childhood. But it wasn't really. I didn't use the beach very much at all.

I like the personality of the Belgians. They're deeply eccentric, which is something that comes across in their design - terrific.

You cant please all the people all the time.

My phrase has always been that I am looking for the versatility of theatre in film. I think I have been quite lucky in that so far.

And there's no way I'm going to do Dame Edna.

I need my friends, I need my house, I need my garden.

I'm not someone who can lie on a beach and do nothing. I am not sure what you are supposed to do, so I get bored. I prefer to have a purpose, such as going to Alaska to see orca whales.

The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone's comfort

The American educational psychologist Patricia Alexander has expressed the view that fear paralyses and curiosity empowers. Accordingly, she reasons, we should always be more interested than afraid.

The inciting incident is how you get (characters) to do something. It's the doorway through which they can't return, you know. The story takes care of the rest.

With all the yoga and meditation that I do, when the chaos happens it happens. But I'm not as affected as a lot of people - I don't react as much. I just let things drip off my back a little bit.

What well-advised ear regards What earth can say? Thy words are gold, but thy rewards Are painted clay.

Getting old is not for sissies, kid.

The mad is either insane or he is composing verses.

I want to be someone making music/with my coming.

You can play golf with liberals, be neighbors with them, go out to dinner. I just don't want them in power.

I wrote a piece in the New York Times back in the Nineties saying that racial discrimination ought to be a criminal offense, not just a civil one. I'm all for the criminalization of discrimination.