I'm not speaking, you know, egocentrically at all, but I do have a very wide range.
I could play a lot of things. And it's hard for people and logically hard and understandably hard for people to think of me for certain roles.
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.
My mantra is 'stay perpendicular.' Horizontal is not as good.
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.
