Since I've started to star in pictures I have always managed to retain my singularity of purpose when I got into the business, which was to be an artist, as an actor, more than anything else. But to get the certain kind of role you want, you have to be in a certain position in the business and it's dog-eat-dog and it gets very hairy and you can lose your point of view sometimes.

I always made a living as an actor when I came to California. I never had to do anything else.

The people I worked with were bigger than life. Once you put them on the screen, they were huge.

There's no time in life to do all the roles I'd like to play.

In Hitchcocks eyes the movement was dramatic, not the acting. When he wanted the audience to be moved, he moved the camera. He was a subtle human being, and he was also the best director I have ever worked with.

The big reason why I became an actor in the first place was to communicate. I never acted in high school...I was desperate to communicate.

When I was starting to get noticed as an actor in the 1970s for something other than the third cowboy on the right who ended up dying in every movie or episode, Burt Reynolds was the biggest star in the world.