Quotes

I had to learn it the hard way. I studied with Lee Strasberg. Acting is not acting. It's being. If you have the kind of personality makeup where you can transform into being the character in that situation, it brings about authenticity. You get a feel of the situation, the line in a scene and where your hearts goes to in a scene and you always keep that in mind.

[on why he excelled at playing crazed backwoods preachers and religious zealots] I've always loved Walter Huston in Duel in the Sun (1946) as a preacher. I've always wanted to play some preachers like that 'cause my mother wanted me to be a preacher so bad, it broke her heart when I didn't. That wasn't my cup of tea. I had repressed a lot of things in me from my father's action and behavior towards his children. I didn't want to be a man like that, I didn't want to be violent, so I repressed it. When they started giving me these villains, I started drawing on that and I saw I had all the fury of hell and violence there, that I was really psychotic inside, because I could go into an instant rage or hostility. It was not acting, it was real. And they just kept giving these parts to me.