- I don't need to be made to look evil. I can do that on my own.
- I make movies that nobody will see. I've made movies that even I have never seen.
- Is typecasting really a problem?
- My hair was famous before I was.
- If you want to learn how to build a house, build a house. Don't ask anybody, just build a house.
- I can't imagine being somebody else. And anything I play, my reference is completely from the planet Show Business. I don't know anything about anybody else, people that I've known all my life--my family, my brothers--I don't know . . . I only know about me.
- Emotional power is maybe the most valuable thing that an actor can have.
- At its best, life is completely unpredictable.
- I think that a good movie creates its own world, and that world needn't refer to anything that's real. If it's consistent, if it's entertaining, if it's interesting, it justifies its being there.
- I always think that in movies or on stage, two people can be talking to each other--the audience doesn't necessarily have to know what they're talking about, just so long as they know that YOU know what you're talking about.
- I used to be prettier than I am, but I think I look better now. I was a pretty boy. Particularly in my early movies. I don't like looking at them so much. There's a sort of pretty thing about me.
- Bear costumes are funny . . . Bears as well.
- I've enjoyed making movies for lots of different reasons. Sometimes, it was the other people. Sometimes, it was the fact that I was really good in it. Sometimes, it was the location. Sometimes, it was the paycheck. Sometimes, it can be lots of different things, or a lot of those things. Or there can be reasons why you'd like to avoid it the next time. Like the jungle. I've made a couple of movies in the jungle, and I don't want to go back to the jungle.
- Back home, I do the same things every day. Exactly the same. I eat at the same time, I get up at the same time, I do the same things in the same order. I read. I have coffee. Then I study my scripts, I exercise on the treadmill, I make myself a little something to eat. I am a great believer in the Mediterranean diet.
- Careers are not often as chosen as people think they are. People talk to me about my choices. I don't make choices, hardly. Things happen, and you say yes or no--usually "yes", because it's always better to do something. What's the choice? Somebody will say, "Don't do that part, you don't need to do that part.' And I'll say, "Why not? What am I going to do? Sit around the house?" I'd much rather go to work, and see actors, and have fun.
- I believe in saving money. I believe in having a house. I believe in keeping things clean. I believe in exercising. Slow and steady is a very good thing for me. It works for me.
- [on how he selects his acting roles] I don't choose that much. I just sort of take what's there. I don't have much else to do. I don't have a lot of hobbies. I don't play golf. I don't have any children. Things that occupy people's time. I just try to take jobs. I basically work so much because I'm lazy.
- [on guns] I don't even like holding them. Whenever I hold a gun, I want to get it out of my hand as quick as possible.
- I don't particularly like to do anything dangerous. And here I was in Bangkok [filming The Deer Hunter (1978)]. I was in the jungle and in the mountains. Being an actor has taken me places that I never would have gone to . . . It's been a very interesting life.
- I eat the same things all the time: fish, hardly ever meat. Chicken, vegetables. I'm fond of steamed sea bass over leeks. I don't drink hard liquor. I like wine.
- [on his routine] I get up early, at six or seven, and have coffee. I usually read in the morning. And then, if I have a script, I do that for a while. Then I exercise at a certain time. About noon. I like to cook, so usually, I'll be making something. And I have my script. My favorite thing is to have two scripts. It's great to study two things at the same time.
- I have been in movies that I thought I wasn't very good in. I think, "Chris, don't let your mouth hang open like that next time. Look at that facial tic. Don't walk in such a self-conscious way!" But sometimes, I watch myself and I think that I am terrific--and that is really nice.
- I have this theory about words. There's a thousand ways to say "Pass the salt". It could mean, you know, "Can I have some salt?" or it could mean, "I love you.". It could mean, "I'm very annoyed with you". Really, the list could go on and on. Words are little bombs, and they have a lot of energy inside them.
- [on Pulp Fiction (1994)] I put aside an hour every day to go over that monologue again and again for months, and every time I got to the end of it, I would crack up.
- I was already 35 years old, and I'd been in show business for 30-plus years, and suddenly there was this big movie and I was getting an Oscar, and this enormous thing happened. In Annie Hall (1977), I played the strange brother who wanted to drive into oncoming cars. Immediately after that was The Deer Hunter (1978), where I played this nice guy who shoots himself in the head. Something happened there. The fact that they came so close together, and they were both important movies, two big public things where I was simultaneously . . . "disturbed". That got the ball rolling for me in terms of being an actor.
- I won't do commercials, either. I don't want to sell anything. As an actor, it's tricky. You have this platform and it has to do with your face, your charisma. It's tricky when you endorse something because people are liable to believe you. Be careful.
- I would like to be a very old man and still be acting. So I feel lucky to have stuck around for this long. You have to be good and all that, but you also have to be lucky. I guess in everything. But especially if you're an actor. So I got no complaints.
- I'm serious. I do not like the unknown or the unexpected. I cannot stand being surprised, yet as an actor I like surprise. I get very upset if my bills aren't paid immediately.
- I've always been a character actor, although I'm not quite sure what that means. All my scripts are absolutely covered in notes, so any time I say anything--even "pass the salt"--I have six subtexts, comments on what I really mean when I'm saying that. Maybe that's what gives the impression that I'm saying one thing and thinking something else.
- [on what makes him choose parts] Lots of things. The script, the directors, the location, the actors, how much are they going to pay me? How long is it going to take?
- [on if he does research to prepare for a role] No. The soul is in the words, comes from the words, not research. [Research is] useless, waste of time. And exhausting. I just don't know how to do it. I only know my own experiences. People are completely mysterious to me. Even in my own family I have no idea what any of them are thinking.
- People always comment about my hair. It is unusual for a man my age to have so much.
- There were years when I didn't do anything but collect unemployment. I worked a lot, but I worked for nothing. I worked for 15 years as a kind of janitor at the Actors Studio. I would do manual things. I did lots of plays, theater workshops, for nothing.
- [on how he memorizes lines and prepares for a role] What I do has a lot to do with the words. My favorite thing is to have two scripts at the same time, and study them simultaneously in the kitchen. Go over the words, over and over, do them different ways, different inflections and rhythms. For me, rhythm is very important. I think we express ourselves as much with rhythm as with the words. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. I think it's very true. If you start to say your lines and it sounds right, usually I stick with that. If it sounds right, it probably is right. It's curious, how you're not collaborating with anyone at that point, and by the time you get there with other actors on the set, usually what you've done at home makes sense, and it's acceptable to everybody. The thing I have trouble with, because I'm so dependent on knowing my lines, is that if suddenly somebody says, "Here's a big speech. You're going to do that instead," I get lost. At that point, I understand why Marlon Brando loves cue cards.
- What I used to do was, I'd get the script and see who the character was--a spy, a lumberjack, whatever--then I'd try to dress the part for the audition, to give the impression that I was tough or funny or whatever the part seemed to call for. That was always a disaster. I would never get the job. If I learned anything it's not to do anything like that. Now if they want to look at me, I go in and let them look at me. Let them figure out their own reasons for why they'd want to hire me.
- [on why he hates not to be working] When I don't have any work sometimes, a kind of thing sets in where my mind shuts down. It's almost like hibernation. It's not that I'm unhappy, but I'm not thinking anything. Then I'll go and watch television. And after an hour or two, I'll think, "You're just sitting there watching television and it's not even interesting". And there's nothing to do. Life becomes meaningless.
- With stage fright you keep on doing it and eventually the fear goes away. If you stick around long enough you become very hard to intimidate. It is very difficult to make me nervous about working these days. There have been so many times when I thought I was finished, but it was not true - you just keep going. I am scared of sickness, pollution and crazy people but, work-wise, there is nothing to frighten me.
- [on his process of acting] You know. it's really tricky. People have no idea. How do you do it? Most of the time I don't. I mean, I can't. You just do it as well as you can. And, hopefully, you did some good stuff here and some good stuff there. The best part is going home in the car at the end of the day, and thinking, "I was good".
- I think that movie sets when they're good, are a lot like sandboxes.
- People think that my favorite roles to do are villains, but I find comedy to be the most challenging and rewarding.
- I would make a very bad killer in real life because I don't think I could even pick up a gun, much less actually shoot one. Guns make me very nervous. They're dangerous. I'm more of a pacifist than anyone could imagine.
- [on Quentin Tarantino] Movie scripts are usually pretty loose--things usually change a lot. But not with [Quentin Tarantino]. His scripts are absolutely huge. All dialogue. It's all written down. You just learn the lines. It's more like a play.
- Me and Dennis Hopper, when we were doing that scene in True Romance (1993), it was hilarious. It really was--including shooting him. All that laughing was real. He was killing me. And all the guys around us--that was a very cracking-up day.
- Golf. My God, that's a mysterious occupation. I know people who are--good friends--who are absolutely smitten, practicing their swing and talking about it. I can understand some sort of sport where your body got a benefit, like marathon running or bicycle racing. That's not golf. And not only that, but the whole business of standing in the sun--my God. That's like torture.
- Professional dancers don't go dancing.
- I don't like zoos. Awful.
- When I was a kid, there was someone in my family, an adult, and whenever I saw them, they would say, "You got a lotta nerve." From the time I was a little kid, it was always like, "Heh, heh, heh--you got a lotta nerve." I always thought, "What does that mean?" But then when I got older, I thought that it was an instruction. If you tell a kid something, it sticks. I think I do have a lot of nerve. But, I mean, I think I maybe got it from that person who said it to me.
- There's something dangerous about what's funny. Jarring and disconcerting. There is a connection between funny and scary.
- They say that the human smile is in fact one of those primordial things--that in fact it's a showing of teeth, that it's a warning. That when we smile, in a primeval way it has to do with fear.
- Sometimes I look at this watch and I think, "There's some guy that puts these little screws in there?" There is something about it. I'm not into cars, either, but there is something about a really magnificent car.
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