There are so many parallels in society today [with era of J. Edgar Hoover ] that you can use, whether it's the head of a studio or the head of an organization, a major newspaper, a major factory or company, of people who stay too long, maybe, and overstay their usefulness.

I found out that a lot of my liberal friends weren't liberal because they weren't liberal about approaching anybody else's ideas, or at least standing for it. They started getting really animalistic about, "I can't even associate with this guy. He's stupid. He's an idiot."

Nowadays, politically, everybody is promising everything. That's the only way you can get elected.

I never considered myself a cowboy, because I wasn`t. But I guess when I got into cowboy gear I looked enough like one to convince people that I was.

That's why I don't rehearse a lot and why I shoot a lot immediately. I have ideas of where I'd like to take the character, but we both end up going together.

When you're an actor, you're so busy: people are always coming up to you and pulling your collar, making sure that things fit, brushing your hair and you're always being yanked up, so finally when you're behind a camera, you're just a slob.

I tried being reasonable, I didn't like it.