Quotes

When I was young and crazy, I was young and crazy. It can be hard enough just to BE in your teens and 20s. Then add fame, money, access, and every single person telling you that you're the greatest person who ever was, and it can be a recipe for disaster. Some people literally don't survive it.

[on his short-lived sitcom, A New Kind of Family (1979)] It was notable only for how bad it was.

... One of the great gifts we get (as actors) is that we live on, frozen in time, forever... Truly, the most fulfilling moments I've ever had are on the stage. If you can't have that as an actor, then you might as well at least have that other great thing, which is immortality.

A few years ago I got to a point where I realized that the only way you can tell someone's age is how they live their life. The candles on the cake mean absolutely nothing.

[on the death of James Gandolfini] James Gandolfini gave the greatest performance in the history of television. He was also a kind man. Condolences to his family.

[on the late Patrick Swayze] He was an expert dancer, he wrote hit songs, he starred in hit movies, he was an amazing horseman. But the thing I will remember him most for was his amazing love affair with his wife, Lisa [Lisa Niemi]. He played my brother twice, in The Outsiders (1983) when I was 17, and then in Youngblood (1986). Tonight, I lost a brother.

[on Bad Influence (1990)] It was a little company that released it, it was really ahead of its time... I'm really proud of it. And it's Curtis Hanson. He'd directed a small movie before that, but it was his first directorial work that really worked. Helmut Newton shot the ad campaign. It's [James] Spader at the top of his game, right after Sex, Lies And Videotape. It's sexy. It's weird. It's dark. The characters are great. It was David Koepp's first big screenplay. It was actually a writing sample that was around town to get David work at the time, and Steve Tisch-now the owner of the New York Giants-found it, loved it, and together we put it together. The soundtrack was really weird. You know, it's also a great snapshot of underground L.A. at the beginning of the '90s. And yet it doesn't feel dated. But I'd say that would be the one I'd tell people to go and look at if they haven't seen it. [2017]

[on Sex Tape (2014)] Such a fun part. That's how Jake Kasdan and I ended up doing The Grinder together, because we had such a great time on Sex Tape. I just had such a blast coming up with this corporate dweeb, a sort of nerd who was also doing coke and listening to death metal and was obsessed with Walt Disney art. I just felt it was a type of guy you hadn't really seen before, and I was so happy with how it came out. [2017]

There's this unbelievable bias and prejudice against quote-unquote good-looking people, that they can't be in pain or they can't have rough lives or be deep or interesting. They can't be any of the things that you long to play as an actor. I'm getting to play those parts now and loving it. When I was a teen idol, I was so goddamn pretty I wouldn't have taken myself seriously.

[when asked why people were surprised that he was funny in Parks and Recreation (2009)] Again, there's a historical bias that good-looking people are not funny.

[2019] Honestly, one of the great traumatic experiences of my life was watching Prince William lose his hair. He's going to be the f-king king of England! There's a pill [to combat hair loss]... The first glimmer that a single hair of mine was going to fall out, I was having stuff mainlined into my f-king veins. And that's what I did for the next 30 years.