A lot of people are going around saying 'You won the Academy Award for such and such.' 'No. I didn't.' 'You didn't?' 'Well you should have.'.
You don't know how much you appreciate your privacy until you don't have it.
My approach to acting is that I am totally intuitive. I read the script and I get it. If I don't get it I can't do it.
I want to be up there being lauded and applauded and given all these and on the red carpet waving at the hordes of people.
It's sort of well-known that anytime any catastrophe happens anywhere in the world they can count on the United States for help.
My roots were pretty far removed from high income. It's interesting to be back there at the level of income I have now at this stage in my life.
I can only be so long without work before I start getting antsy.
Audiences believe what you believe. It's a matter of believing yourself. If I believe me then you've got no choice. None at all.
I have to deal with being famous. Sometimes I have to tell people I don't do autographs thank you very much. At certain places I refuse to have my photograph taken.
The odds are lousy that I actually said something attributed to me.
Attacking People With Disabilities is the Lowest Display of Power I Can Think Of
Never let pride be your guiding principle. Let your accomplishments speak for you.
I avoid seeing myself while I'm working on role so I won't see "me.
I am going to stop calling you a white man and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man.
I was 22 before I took my first dance class. I had never been athletic so I was very stiff; I still am. I think what I got mostly from dance was carriage.
It's seldom that you get to work with one director more than once. I've worked with Clint Eastwood three times but that's the only one that's happened with simply because I adore his work.
The reason actors artists writers have agents is because we'll do it for nothing. That's a basic fact - you gotta do it.
Just that working with Clint again is like coming home.
When I was a teenager I began to settle into school because I'd discovered the extracurricular activities that interested me: music and theater.
I have never acted he has never been cast in a romantic lead or has been cast opposite a female love interest in any movie he starred in.
Acting means living it's all I do...
How do we change the world? One random act of kindness at a time.
I was told that I was good in my dance movement classes and that I should concentrate on dance because it would enhance my ability to get acting work.
Actors cannot work against each other. It's totally impossible.
I just wanted to be an actor. It's better to be well-rounded.
I like producing but acting is the quintessential me and I'm probably better at that than I am at anything. My heart has always been in the movies.
I'm always trying new things and learning new things. If there isn't anything more you can learn - go off and die.
Let me tell you about being executive producer. It is not a job it's a title. Don't go around asking executive producers what they do because they don't do anything alright?
In my career? Me. I'm the boss. I'm the end all and be all. I'm the alpha and omega in that.
Anyone who spends a significant amount of time with me finds me disagreeable.
I was always ambitious. I always wanted to be more than I was....I always wanted to be a movie actor.
Dr. Martin Luther King is not a black hero. He is an American hero.
I don't want a Black History Month. Black history is American history.
Black history is American history.
Let me be the first to tell you drinking alcohol is the worst thing to do in cold weather. Hot soup is the best because the process of digesting food helps to warm you up.
Our situation with global warming and air quality and all of that has gotten to be catastrophic.
I've travelled a lot but I am essentially American. All my input has been American.
I've been living with myself all of my life so I know all of me. So when I watch me all I see is me. It's boring.
Donald Trump is the Honey Boo Boo of rich people.
I like the blues a lot. I grew up on it.
The better the actor usually the safer you feel working with.
The best way to guarantee a loss is to quit.
I think the best thing somebody ever did to me was my mother opening her legs and squirting me out.
I'm not digging tunnels I'm not building buildings. My work is not hard my work is refreshing my work is pleasant. The more the better. Lying around and getting no job is debilitating.
Don't be afraid of what you want. This is your time. The barriers are down.
You measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you.
Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'.
I don't do cold. My reaction to cold is drastic. I'm a southern boy.
People say it's a movie about boxing but... I don't agree at all. I don't think it's a movie about boxing. Boxing is like a platform. It's just a stage where this is played out.
I don't think you're going to get nominated every time you jump out of the box.
I'm not intimidated by lead roles. I'm better in them. I don't feel pressure. I feel released at times like that. That's what I'm born to do.
I find it difficult to watch myself... I find it boring.
I was raised in Mississippi so heat and humidity is my bread and butter. It keeps me going. I can't stand cold weather.
There's an exercise we do where someone is sat behind you and you're asked to close your eyes and fall backwards. That's acting.
People hear that and say I'm being modest but I am not a modest person but I have to be truthful about what I'm doing and what I'm doing is channeling.
Your best posture is your next posture.
I was lucky in that when the opportunity came I was prepared to meet it.
I understand that when Gary Oldman was in that suit [Batman] sweat would just drip off of him where they had to have holes in the gloves or something.
I got my first job as a card-carrying actor in New York in 1967. Before that I was a very desperate wannabe.
Finding joy is probably tantamount to finding yourself and being comfortable in your own skin.
Life doesn't offer you promises whatsoever so it's very easy to become 'Whatever happened to... ?' It's great to be wanted. I spent a few years not being wanted and this is better.
There is no such thing as homophobia. It is not a fear. It is you being an asshole.
We humans are more concerned with having than with being.
When I was doing theater I was very successful at believing that I was great God's gift to the theater.
So if I believe in God and I do it's because I think I'm God
I'm a firm believer that things happen as they should. The universe unfolds just as it's supposed to.
The highest power is the human mind. That's where God came from and my belief in God is my belief in myself.
Learning how to be still to really be still and let life happen - that stillness becomes a radiance.
I'm also very fond of a light business jet so I'd like to get it before it's too late.
Not only do I have to live right I have to get some cash for my troubles - it's a scary thing and people need to start to think about the messages that they send in the movies.
I think one of the things when you're casting children is you're also casting their parents.
Did you just call me old? I really prefer the word 'experienced'.
Challenge yourself; it's the only path which leads to growth.
That's your job as the actor to understand the human part of the character to make it real.
I've just never been the kind of actor that things have stayed with. I've never needed to carry a character off stage.
My parents were working in a hospital in Memphis. But I didn't live there for any length of time that I remember. The first thing I remember is the town in Mississippi that I live in now Charleston.
From early childhood my thrust was to get into the movies.
I have four children and nine grandchildren. I'm presently wearing out my second wife.
I'm not sure that my upbringing has in itself informed my acting choices.
The accident was a horrible thing - but that horrible thing made Chris at the end of his life Superman. It's a happy irony if there is such a thing. I'm proud to have known him.
Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered as our prince of peace of civil rights. We owe him something major that will keep his memory alive.
Very often you know you stop walking because you say 'Well I'm tired of climbing this hill. I'm never going to get to the top.' And you're only two steps from the top.
If I wasn't acting I have no clue what I'd be doing 'cause I have no other talent.
My earrings are worth just enough to buy me a coffin if I die in a strange place. That was the reason why sailors used to wear them.
I think you have to be left-brained to a certain extent to understand science. I can talk about it but I can't do it.
I'm not a comedian. I don't make things funny if they're not funny. I don't invent funny stuff.
Insanity is coasting through life in a miserable existence when you have a caged lion locked inside and the key to release it.
I would never complain that Hollywood is racist when I'm one of the people touted as a welcome entity there.
There's no mystery to it. Nothing more complicated than learning lines and putting on a costume.
The best way to confront or deal with technological innovation is to keep moving technologically.
When I was a kid I was a cowboy. I had a cap pistol and I'd get up in the morning and strap it on before I got ready.
This kid came up with Napster and before that none of us thought of content protection.
I always wanted to be a fireman a cop an Indian chief a doctor a lawyer. I always wanted to be all these things so I am drawn to these kinds of characters.
Someone's going to put the clothes on you and part of being an actor is wearing costumes. Costumes tell you an awful lot about who you are so you just it's nothing.
Literacy could be the ladder out of poverty
I've always been really hot on westerns. All my life growing up cowboy cowboy cowboy.
You can't take credit for talent; you can only take credit for using it.
As you grow in this business you learn how to do more with less.
Acting means living it's all I do and all I'm good at. If I weren't getting paid well I would still be acting in a small troupe somewhere.
I've never had any intimate relationships with a dolphin.
That is a big turn-on for me a director who knows what he's doing and what he wants and knows when he's gotten what he wants.
Ive got a lot of life left in me and I want to live it doing things I like to do.
Stage is really hard work. You've got to do it every night. Not like doing it once and walking away.
Race seems to me to be less and less a subject worth discussing.
Fatigue discomfort discouragement are merely symptoms of effort.
Part of acting is having the security to turn yourself loose and let yourself go in order to reach whatever depths a character has. If your guts aren't hanging out there you don't offer anything.
I don't get off on romantic parts. But I often think if I had had my dental work done early on well maybe.
Doing comedy is as easy as doing anything else. You're dependent totally on the material.
Let me tell you what justice is. Justice is the law. And that man's feeble attempt to lay down the principles of deceny.
Don't be different just for different's sake. If you see it differently function that way. Follow your own muse always.
I've always been a fan of or desired to or responded to variety. I like variety in life so variety in work is a must.
Working on stage is really a great voice developer.
I think the educational value is what comes first. I've always thought that the most effective tools we have for disseminating information i.e. education is television and film.
If you're not living on the edge then you're taking up a little too much space.
The surest way to lose at any endeavor is to quit.
You want to retire from a job you're not that all enamoured with. I love what I do. I want to keep doing it till I can't get out of bed doing it.
In the harshest place on Earth ... love finds a way.
Nobody is trying to save energy. We're trying to shift our use of fuel. Forget saving energy; if we get the right kind of energy there are endless amounts.
These walls are funny. First you hate 'em then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized.
Forgiveness liberates the soul it removes fear.
I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice.
I'm married I've been married to the same woman for - well I've been with the same woman for close to...long enough to fool around.
Nelson Mandela was a man of incomparable honor unconquerable strength and unyielding resolve---a saint to many a hero to all who treasure liberty freedom and the dignity of humankind.
Write something insightful. Say Morgan Freeman said it. Win at internet.
Someone's always going to come down on the side of the fence.
And finding the hat I always like to find the hat. And then props just dress the set. It's all fabulous.
I gravitate towards gravitas.
It's what I learn from the great actors that I work with. Stillness. That's all and that's the hardest thing.
If you get called on to help somebody pull focus to some good cause that's good use of your fame. I don't try to avoid that.
I seldom get into the mood of the story. It's acting. I go in I act I quit. I don't take anything away from it.
Give me something interesting to play and I'm happy.
In growing up I was a child of the movies. I went to the movies every given opportunity and that's pretty much what has informed a lot of my choices.
If I stay at home I'm not famous. I'm only famous when I'm out in the streets so I don't go out on the streets much.
I was very lucky once I got started with a career. I happened to get some really good parts to play with some really good people to play with.
Never give up the ganja.
I go on vacation strictly to relax - to kick back with a good book and do nothing else but read sleep and eat.
I hate the word homophobia. It's not a phobia. You are not scared. You are an asshole
People don't want to hang around someone that you don't know how they're going to react to anything you do or say.
I once heard a wise man say there are no perfect men. Only perfect intentions.
Insanity is coasting through life...
What I haven't talked about I don't intend to talk about.
It seems to me that I never grow unless I'm actually working with other actors who have shed whatever shell it is that keeps them insulated from each other.
I am God. So it's easy to play him. They say God is in all things. So if God is in me then I am in God. Therefore I am God. God does not exist without me.
If you dream you've got to dream that it's going to happen. Remember that. If you dream you have to imagine that it will actually happen.
If you're playing somebody who is not you then you can imagine that you are that person. You can feel like he feels move like he moves look like he looks - in your own mind.
Growing up in Mississippi I realized that it was separate and unequal and all that but it was still a safe place.
I believe it doesn't really matter where you work as long as you work. Keep sharpening your teeth.
Is listening important? I can't think of a single walk of life where it wouldn't be.
I was a B student in math simply because my teachers liked me as an actor.
I think you take a job you owe it as much passion as the job itself demands. And most jobs demand that you be totally committed.
I don't do comedy. I think if a situation is funny you just play it for real and if it's funny it's funny.
Marijuana prohibition is just the stupidest law possible....Jus t legalize it and tax it like we do liquor.
As long as you feel like a victim you are one.
But I can say that life is good to me. Has been and is good. So I think my task is to be good to it. So how do you be good to life? You live it.
I don't know what my favorite film of mine is... But I think the most important film I was in was 'Glory'.
If you're comfortable on a horse you're comfortable on a horse. It's like being on a motorbike.
And some places you been before are so great that you don't ever mind going back. Some places you been before you don't ever want to go back you know like Montreal in the Winter.
The trick to any profession is making it look easy.
If your life turns out to be good and you have a tremendous amount of luck in your life it's a good thing to turn around and make it work for others.
In my home who is my boss? If you ask my wife she'll say certainly not her. She claims that she can't make me do anything and so she's not my boss. I am. I'm pretty sure maybe.
Marketing only really works with word of mouth.
If you want to see a miracle be the miracle
People need to start to think about the messages that they send in the movies.
Is there a movie I think I should have won the Oscar for? Yeah. All of them.
If we don't save the oceans if we don't do something about what we're doing to the oceans as well as the planet at large we're going to be really sorry.
I don't have to do anything. The character is shaped on the page.
Every job's a challenge. The challenge is to do it and make it look right like you belong there - wherever that is.
How are we going to get rid of racism? Stop talking about it!
It [love about acting] is all about role playing - the same thing you do when you're a kid when you play with dolls or toys and make up stories. I never grew out of it.
I don't have anybody telling me what to say. I have people who would suggest maybe that I shouldn't do this that or the other but that's strictly up to me.
I had gone to school to work on technique and found it wasn't something that was really worthwhile to me although it probably was.
I don't remember what my favourite comedy film is - truthfully! I saw Borat and I thought I was not going to be able to get out of the theatre because I was in so much pain from the laughter.
I want to thank everybody and anybody who ever had anything to do with the making of this picture.