Quotes

As long as I get phone calls from the Museum of Modern Art, that all the film buffs love it, that's a residual. It isn't a financial residual and it isn't an artistic residual, but it's an ego residual.

This isn't exactly a stable business. It's like trying to stand up in a canoe with your pants down.

The year you win an Oscar is the fastest year in a Hollywood actor's life. Twelve months later they ask, "Who won the Oscar last year?".

[on director Frank Perry] I've been in so many bad movies and worked with so many bad directors that I go into a film expecting nothing. That's why I respect and admire Frank Perry so much. He's a rare man and I've worked with enough stiffs to know the difference, pal, but he knows the problems of actors and I know the problems of a director. Frank is as far away from Otto Preminger as you can get.

Show business is like a bumpy bus ride. Sometimes you find yourself temporarily juggled out of your seat and holding onto a strap. But the main idea is to hang in there and not be shoved out the door.

[on being blacklisted in Hollywood after exposing David Begelman in 1977] People told me I set a dangerous precedent. My ex-wife said that if I had played the game I would have owned the town, but I was always too independent.

[on trying to get a sequel for Charly (1968)] You don't have to be a 17-year-old zealot to wage guerrilla warfare. Some of us, by nature, are intrigued by the challenge. I never intended to play Don Quixote and I don't intend to go out looking for more windmills, I can tell you. I love making movies very much.

[on Joan Crawford] I think she felt fraudulent, precisely because she had crossed the railroad tracks - had come up from nothing - and that therefore she felt she wasn't the real thing because she was just "acting". But Joan was the real thing.

[on playing the Batman villain 'Shame'] I Think I do remember the producers making several phone calls ahead of time, saying, ' What kind of character would you like to play? ' I said it might be fun to play a very, very, very dumb cowboy, who took himself very, very seriously. Then they decided to do a takeoff of Shane. That is how they came up with the name Shame. I recall they kind of let me pick my own costume, and I did a lot of my own stunts.