Gene Wilder characters wanted to be calm, but to the great delight of audiences, they rarely succeeded.

I'd like to do a comedy with Emma Thompson. I admire her as an actress so much. I love her. And I didn't know it until recently that her whole career started in comedy.

If the physical thing you're doing is funny, you don't have to act funny while doing it...Just be real and it will be funnier

I certainly didn't have New York Jewish humor. But I was in three Mel Brooks films so people thought I was a connoisseur of New York Jewish humor.

In fact, [Gene Wilder] had made a hysteric seem considerably less funny in his film debut as a terrified undertaker in "Bonnie And Clyde." And neurotics soon became his stock-in-trade, whether he was playing the weird title character in "Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory..."

Gene Wilder often said that his job as an actor wasn't to make something funny but to make it real.

My favorite author is Anton Chekhov, not so much for the plays but for his short stories, and I think he was really my tutor.