Quotes

You are defined by who you are, by your choices in life, in all regards, not just in doing movies.

Freedom is not negotiable.

They say a lot of women would like to see me naked, but there's not a lens long enough for that.

I never applied to go back to Cuba. They did invite me to the Havana Film Festival, but I am opposed to the regime in Cuba. I'd have liked to go back every day of my life. But in honor of all the people who have died and suffered under that regime, I'm not able to make that leap.

I'm an exile. My father had the courage to leave with his wife, his mother and three children under twelve. It took more courage to leave, to sacrifice everything for freedom, than to stay.

I spent seven years without working, so if they're making cop movies, I'll play cops. I got two kids to bring up.

Jennifer 8 (1992) is a movie that was reduced by 20 minutes and they took the heart out of the picture. They took three or four scenes of the interrogation out between me and John Malkovich. The script was originally called A Policeman's Story, and in the end, there was no policeman's story! It was a movie about him dealing with demons, and finding light and a muse in this blind girl. And there was an alcoholic struggle in the script which is not in the movie. It was a better film at 2 hours and 20 minutes long instead of 2 hours. There were electrifying moments between my character and Malkovich, and that interrogation was precluded by an all-night alcoholic binge by my character. When they come to arrest me, I was naked, with my pants down, in complete emotional shambles. But they cut that out and diminished the whole film. My character was in a very pitiful situation, and had begun to drink again because of the death of his partner. So when you cut to me sitting in the interrogation room all cleaned up, it's a front. So consequently it's a totally different movie. It's a thriller, and it works as a thriller, but that's all it is. How do you deeply care about people if you don't give the audience a chance to care about them or to understand them? That was my argument. So that was painful on many fronts, that whole process, for everybody concerned, really.

In the beginning of my career I was offered every psycho role out there. After 8 Million Ways to Die (1986), it was like they couldn't imagine anyone else playing a drug lord.