I wasn't a babe in the woods. I'd watched a lot of stars, from James Dean to Brando, and I'd seen everybody alive work at MGM. I had a certain old-timer's quality, even though I was young and new, and drew on what I believed before I made it.

When you use a dialect, you worry that the people you're imitating will think you're making fun of them.

There has long been a bemoaning of the lack of opportunity to make films that are anything but explosions or the ladling on the pea soup or whatever you want to call it. You can hardly make a movie today where somebody isn't a murderer or a rapist or, if it's a "Fried Green Tomatoes" that isn't some wistful thing on this, that or the other thing.

I want a big 25-foot pink statue that holds my grave. Or I also might like the way the Indians did it. They hang you up on the top of a tree and the birds eat you. No, really I would probably choose cremating.

The average celebrity meets, in one year, ten times the amount of people that the average person meets in his entire life.

When they say I'm a great actor, I close my ears because it's not good for you to think that way.

A man needs a private life. With no ability to have a private life, one thing leads to another, and before you know it we have Bill and Monica. We need to get real about things. Humans are humans. Why should we expect more?