Quotes

The fun for me is still acting, though I like doing everything. I'm not really interested in being a superstar. I have a really wonderful, secure private life. The thing about becoming a 'star' is that you get offered the really good roles and that's what I want. I found out a long time ago that the hardest thing about playing Hamlet is being asked to do it. Luckily for me, now, I'm being asked. (from a 1988 interview)

I don't have much respect for what I call the 'technical' actors, who work out every little nuance of how they're going to say the words. To me, that's acting in a vacuum. It seems to me to be a tremendous act of hubris to decide ahead of time how you're going to react to the way I say something. I love playing characters. I'm not interested in playing myself, although I'm the conduit for that character.

I'm not a well-trained actor in the classical sense but what I think I have going for me is a sense of honesty about my work.

The fun for me is playing characters -- not that I would ever turn down superstardom. But I would only use stardom as a way to get access to all the really great roles. I want to play everything.