Quotes

What would happen if you melted? You know, you never really hear this talked about much, but spontaneous combustion? It exists!...[people] burn from within...sometimes they'll be in a wooden chair and the chair won't burn, but there'll be nothing left of the person. Except sometimes his teeth. Or the heart. No one speaks about this, but its for real.

My name can't be *that* tough to pronounce!

When I don't feel free and can't do what I want I just react. I go against it.

[when told he would have to "bite the bullet"] Yes, but I don't have to eat the whole rifle.

I'm a meathead, man. You've got smart people, and you've got dumb people. I just happen to be dumb.

I'm sorry my existence is not very noble or sublime.

[on being a star] It can still be very surreal. It's easy to become very self-critical when you're an actor. Then you get critiqued be the critics. Whether you agree with them or not, people are passing judgment on you.

[on drugs] I've had wonderful experiences. I mean really wonderful. In teaching. Personal epiphanies. About life. About a different perspective -- help with different perspectives that you have. You know what I mean? Relationships to nature. Relationships with the self. With other people. With events.

[when asked if he had any fears] I used to have nightmares that they would put "He played Ted" on my tombstone.

I'm Mickey Mouse. They don't know who's inside the suit.

Here comes 40. I'm feeling my age and I've ordered the Ferrari. I'm going to get the whole mid-life crisis package.

It's always wonderful to get to know women, with the mystery and the joy and the depth. If you can make a woman laugh, you're seeing the most beautiful thing on God's Earth.

[on River Phoenix] You can't blame Hollywood for what happened to River. Kids are doing drugs everywhere in the world. He had his own very personal problems I will never discuss with the press. They're just way too personal. River had a self-destructive side to his personality. He was angry and hurt that he couldn't have a private life once he became famous. He just couldn't deal with having his private life on the front page all the time.

[on River Phoenix] River was a remarkable artist and a rare human being. I miss him every day.

[on River Phoenix and My Own Private Idaho (1991)] We were doing I Love You to Death (1990), and we got the Idaho script. We were driving in a car on Santa Monica Boulevard, probably on the way to a club, and were talking really fast about the whole idea. We were excited. It could have been like a bad dream, a dream that never follows through because no one commits, but we just forced ourselves into it. We said, "Okay, I'll do it if you do it. I won't do it if you don't." We shook hands. That was it.

[on Patrick Swayze and working with him on Point Break (1991)] He was a beautiful person, an artist! Patrick, he just wanted to experience life and, for his work, he wanted to take the opportunity of the film and it gave him that sense. There was some sky diving sequences in this film we did together and as filming was going on it came to be that Patrick was jumping out of airplanes all the time. I think he had over 30 jumps during the course of filming and so the production served him with a cease and desist which he listened to until they got to Hawaii. He jumps out of planes and did the flips and falling to the ground and he did it with an open heart. I'll always remember his buddy for lighting up a room with his presence. I can say what I know that he lived life to the fullest.

[1995, on his idea of happiness] Lying in bed with my lover, riding my bike, sports, happy times with my friends, conversation, learning, the earth, dirt, a beautiful repast with friends, family with wine and glorious food and happy tidings and energy and zest and lust for life. I like being in the desert, in nature, being in extraordinary spaces in nature, high in a tree or in the dirt, hanging out with my family, my sisters.

[1995] L.A. has been my place of abode for seven years and I have a little place in New York City. I don't even have a house house, but I have been living in the same place in Los Angeles for a couple of years and it's just now becoming a home. I like to be free and unfettered. I like the option of being able to do anything and go anywhere, anytime. I like to have my house open. A lot of my friends have keys to my houses and I like to have everything, you know, 'What's mine is yours,' and to drink wine, talk and hang out.

[1995, on My Own Private Idaho (1991)' You know what's great? Right after I finished Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), I went to Paris to visit a couple of friends, shipped over one of my Norton's, my '72 750 with California plates, and just hung out for two-and-a-half weeks. My Own Private Idaho (1991) had just opened at a theater right near my friend's house where I was staying. I got stopped by a couple of American students who'd seen it and they bought me a beer. Which is what you should do in Paris: sit in cafés, talk, hang out. I had miraculous weather, so it didn't rain on my parade. Then, I went to New York to visit friends, sat down, hung out, and the same sort of thing happened there. So, do I want more movies that lead to experiences like that? Yes, please.

[on auditioning for Oliver Stone's The Doors (1991)] I auditioned a few times, but I don't think I was ever seriously in the running. I was terrified. I just read some of Jim Morrison's poetry and listened to some of his music and did what I could.

[1992] It's only very recently that I've been approached with, 'Would you like to do this?' Mostly, I'm still auditioning, which there's something to be said for. Up to now, my only real choices have been: 'Hmmmm, an audition, go or not go? Go!' I auditioned seven times for _Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1900)_ and all the 'finalists' had to read with everyone else-me, Pauly Shore, Josh Richman, Alex Winter and others. I met with Francis Ford Coppola three times before he asked me if I wanted to play the part in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992).

[on his beliefs] Sure I believe in God and the Devil but they don't have to have pitchforks and a long white beard.

[on directing himself as a villain in Man of Tai Chi (2013) The first day was not fun, because one is so objective and one is so subjective. As an actor, you only have your responsibility to your role within the whole, and the director has a responsibility to the whole and you in it. So it's a different mindset. And you're literally, physically, in two different spaces.

[on the possibility of Bill and Ted 3] It's a long story. There's lots of subterfuge and conspiracy theories. There's a whole thing... I might have to do one of those independent press, conspiracy, other-name kind of [statements] explaining why it hasn't happened yet, because it's pretty dark out there... There is [a script]. There's all sorts of stuff and it just can't - it's just - there's darkness out there that's keeping it from happening... It's that part of the story where it's looking grim. It's the dark period of the idea!

[on turning down Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997)] They said, "You've got to do this", And I said, "I read the script and I can't. It's called Speed and it's on a cruise ship." I didn't work at Fox for 15 years.

[on why he turn down the opportunity to reprise his role as Jack Traven for Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997)] I didn't get to be in that. Well, I decided not to be in that. I loved working with Jan de Bont and Sandra, of course. It was just a situation in life where I got the script and I read the script and I was like "ugggghhh". It was about a cruise ship and I was thinking, a bus, a cruise ship... Speed, bus, but then a cruise ship is even slower than a bus and I was like, I love you guys but I just can't do it.

I love riding my bike through Los Angeles on the Pacific Coast Highway. I also go to the Santa Monica Mountains. It is like losing myself, like playing a musical instrument or any other pastime that takes away regular cares and responsibilities.

[on what would surprise people about him] I read a lot. I have just finished Proust's A La Recherche Du Temps Perdu and John Updike's Rabbit novels. That was cool, reading literature looking at America over the past 40 years.

[I am trying to give up] smoking. I didn't even start until I was 30. I got hooked making Feeling Minnesota and now it's a prison, but I want to stop.

I never cared about the money, that's not why I started acting, and I never liked the fame. The paparazzi culture is more pervasive than it used to be, kind of: 'Let's watch the actor pump gas.' It's nice not to have to worry about bills, though. It's a cliche that money doesn't buy you happiness, but it does buy you the freedom to live your life the way you want. Knock on wood, I've been very fortunate: I've been able to earn a really good living and start a charity foundation, which is nice.

As a kid, I didn't dream of becoming a movie star. No, I dreamt of travelling to distant planets in flying machines. I loved acting, though, and by the time I was a teenager, it was something I wanted to do with my life. I was acting professionally by the time I was 16. I grew up around the business - my stepfather was a director, my mother was a costume designer - but I also loved sport and, at one point, thought of doing that as a career. I played hockey, basketball and baseball.

[on his biggest challenge] Settling down. I am pretty nomadic. Staying in one place is hard for me. I've rented homes before and I've stayed in hotels - I was in a hotel for almost four years in the early Nineties - but the road has also been my home. I was in Australia for 16 months doing The Matrix Revolutions (2003) and The Matrix Reloaded (2003). I've made more than 40 films, so if you think that each of those take three to four months minimum, living in a trailer, it works out at quite a few years on the road!

[on whether he thinks he takes after his mother] Yes, my mother is the one who raised me - she is a very independent woman and she probably passed that on. She is from Hampshire, she left England when she was very, very young - 14 or 15 - but she gave me some English manners. She taught me which side the fork went on the plate, but also there was the two-fingers attitude, an irreverence. I love the irreverence and the word play of British humour and the social commentary. I was raised on The Two Ronnies (1971) and Monty Python.

I don't shop a lot, but I do like nice clothes and, I guess, if I have a look it is suits and T-shirts with casual boots. I like to have a suit that fits well. I wear Kiton, Costume National and Gucci once in a while.

Mortality is very different when you're 20 to when you're 50.

How do people relate to movies now, when they're on portable devices or streaming them? It's not as much about going to the movies. That experience has changed.

I've been really fortunate to be able to do different kinds of films in different scales, different genres, different kinds of roles, and that is important to me.

I am waiting for the right story to tell. Just like 'Man of Tai Chi' just seemed to be the right story to tell. So I'm looking for that. Because I really love directing. I love developing the story. I love actors. I love the cinema of it, the way that you tell a story visually.

I believe in love at first sight. You want that connection, and then you want some problems.

I've been pleased to work with so many wonderful stars through the years. This has been an amazing journey. I hope it continues.

I am not handsome or sexy. Of course, it's not like I am hopeless.

I don't know the law, the kind of law of quantity and quality, but I think the opportunity of people being able to express themselves and to have the means of production is a great thing. It's also changing how we're telling stories.

People were saying that David Geffen and I had gotten married and it just blew me away. Not that they thought I was gay, but that they thought I could land a guy that hot.

It's the journey of self, I guess. You start with this kind of loner, outside guy, which a lot of people can relate to, and he goes out into the world.

I want to make a good, solid kung fu movie.

I mean, if you didn't get it or if you didn't feel like you enjoyed it, sometimes that experience can change.

But I did 'Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure'. They made a cereal out of it, so once you've had a cereal, it doesn't get much more surreal than that. Surreal cereal.

I have definitely been curious and involved in the process; even as a young actor. I was always looking at where the camera was, what story it was telling. And as my experience grew, I wanted to know even more.

When the people you love are gone, you're alone.

You know what, I'd done an interview show when I was like 16 or 17. One of my first jobs. I did interviews for this television show in Toronto.