If Jesus came back today, and saw what was going on in his name, he'd never stop throwing up.
The most difficult part of playing Christ was that I had to keep up the image around the clock. As soon as the picture finished, I returned home to Sweden and tried to find my old self. It took six months to get back to normal.
The studio rented a house for my wife in Los Angeles under a phony name to keep reporters away. Whenever I wanted to visit her and my children, I would have to sneak in the back door after dark.
I've never been in a barroom brawl in my life. I just don't do such things.
I'm getting too old to play some parts, but I'm still greedy.
I owe Mr. Bergman so much.
I just feel I shouldn't work too much, because there are so many other things to do.
I'm not in retirement. I just don't want to work so much, and I don't get that many offers any more.
I think the film you hear about the most is 'The Exorcist.' When people come up to me and say, 'Oh, you scared me!' I was the good guy in that film!
I admired Stephen Daldry very much; I think he's a brilliant director, and also, I feel close to him because he has a lot of theater behind him. He's also a man of great imagination and a lovely sense of humor.
I began imagining scenes in public which some drunk would come up to me and slap me in the face. Nothing like that ever happened, but I often wonder if I would have turned the other cheek.
I've been the type of father who tries desperately to be perfect but doesn't succeed all the time.
There are those who want to believe but can't, and there are those who believe as children and it's no problem for them at all.
I find it very hard to take myself seriously.
Human beings are human beings whether they speak or not.
When I know what the character I'm supposed to play wants in general terms, and when I know what did the other characters want to do, that's when all these wills collide and the emotions show up.
I don't have a philosophy for choosing roles. Sometimes, it's just, 'This might be interesting; that might be fun to do.' There might be interesting actors or directors in the project, even if the part is not important. And then sometimes, you need the money.
Film acting, if you don't play the lead, you come, and you do your scenes in a few days, and you act with a couple of colleagues. All the rest of the actors you never see, and you don't even meet many of them. And you don't know what will happen with what you've done. Maybe it will be in the film, maybe it will not.
Playing Christ, I began to feel shut away from the world. A newspaper became one of my biggest luxuries. I noticed that some of my close friends began treating me with reverence.
It often disturbs me, when I see a film set in a historical time, that the people are too modern.
