The first role I ever played I had the lead and it's pretty much stayed that way, though people take great relish in calling me a character actor, which I am. There are a lot of short parts I could play, but I only do them when they are like this ("A Few Good Men"), central to the idea of the movie.

There's a period just before you start a movie when you start thinking, I don't know what in the world I'm going to do. It's free-floating anxiety. In my case, though, this is over by lunch the first day of shooting.

Being pigeonholed is the death of all actors.

It [TV] is the cancer of film. It's why people can't be educated to film. In the late '60s, we expected to see a movie or two every week and be stimulated, excited and inspired. And we did. Every week after week. Antonioni, Goddard, Truffaut - this endless list of people. And then comes television and home video. I know how to work exactly for the big screen, but it doesn't matter what I think about the art of movie-making versus TV.

I would never want to vilify somebody who considered abortion murder. I was an illegitimate child myself. I may not have existed today.

It always bothered me when people came off stage and were told how great they were. They weren't, really, in my opinion. It was then I started thinking that, contrary to conventional wisdom, film was the artful medium for the actor, not the stage.

A star on a movie set is like a time bomb. That bomb has got to be defused so people can approach it without fear.