- [Studios] won't hire you, even though you screwed the same whores and ate the bullet for it. Yet they pull you aside at a party and say you're their hero for the things you do. [Variety (August 14, 1997)]
- "This is like a sober acid trip" (his reaction to winning the Golden Globe Award!)
- Usually in a battle sequence when a bomb is going off, you forget you're acting.
- I don't think it's wise to dwell on regret. There's regret, sure. But whatever you've done good or bad, is a part of who you are now. That's the thing you can change and improve.
- "I'd begun drinking all the time. We shot in New York City, so I'd be out to the bars every night till 3 or 4 a.m., then try to show up for a 6 o'clock call to stand toe to toe with Michael Douglas and handle 50% of a scene. How could that work? Yet there I was, the guy that struck gold, looking around at dawn to find that the only one still partying was me. I'd be drinking away, doing blow [cocaine], popping pills, and telling myself I wasn't an addict, because there wasn't a needle stuck in my arm. Talk about mixing up fantasy and reality! My true addiction was alcohol. The extra toxic boosters just helped me shore up the wall between my celebrity self and my real self. The questions I was running from were: 'Is this success all a fluke? Had I been fooling everybody so far? Will I get caught?' It was easy to get hammered and messed up. But in doing so, I buried my self-respect, I buried my self-esteem, I buried my creative drive, and I damned near buried myself." - On filming Wall Street (1987) and his life at the time.
- "The same role had been offered to Emilio a year earlier but the financing fell through. This time, Emilio was on another project, so Oliver Stone offered it to me. It was the break of my life, and I knew it. But it was a strange experience, because we filmed in the Philippines, less than 100 miles away from where my dad had filmed Apocalypse Now (1979). People say I look like him - now, here I was, not only making a picture about Vietnam the way he did, but also narrating it the way he did. And, like him, I had a moment that came close to death, when I fell halfway out of a helicopter, but was caught just in time by one of the actors." - On Platoon (1986).
- "I was 10 years old. Dad used to take us on location so the family wouldn't be split up, so we were with him in the Philippines. That's when the heart attack happened. He came back so pale and sick, so weak and thin, seeming so much older, and walking with a cane. This world of fantasy and artifice that I'd known suddenly was about real life and death, about the potential loss of a parent. It didn't make any sense to me. It was enough to keep me away from acting for a long time." - On his father's heart attack filming Apocalypse Now (1979).
- "If he's not getting something out of a performance, he'll come up and go, 'What are you, a faggot from Malibu? Were you playing too much fucking volleyball on the beach growing up?' He once said that my reaction in a shot was comparable to a 'bad Mark Hamill moment.' I said, 'Oliver, I'll take that as a compliment. Star Wars was one of my favorite movies.' - On Oliver Stone.
- My father gave me some pretty bad advice - keep it honest, which I did. People ask, why am I so honest with the press? I don't have an answer. I suppose I'm honest everywhere else. Why should it stop here? Most of my shit sounds like lies. But all my stories are true, and that's the problem. They call me the last honest man in Hollywood. But I care what people think, we all do.
- It's hard to be specific about what parts I may have lost. But ultimately, it's what I'm known for.
- Public speaking is a tremendous fear of mine. The Tonight Show (1962), David Letterman. I would always do a few shots or take an anti-whatever, some prescription relaxation deal and go out there and just kind of just flow with it.
- I don't know. I want to go home at the end of the day and feel like I left a certain part of myself behind. You watch a Pacino performance, a DeNiro performance, you sit back in wonder and watch what they did. I'm curious as to what it would take for me to get to that place.
- There is a fine line between confidence and cockiness. And when you lose sight of what side you're walking on, that's when you are in trouble.
- "I didn't feel it would be any fun. I don't feel connected to basketball. At least, when I do a baseball movie, I know I'm gonna have a good time." - On why he turned down Woody Harrelson's part in White Men Can't Jump (1992).
- "I didn't want to have my wife in the movie snatched by Robert Redford. Besides, to show, in the end, that the million dollars didn't mean anything to the guy by having him buy at an auction an elephant, or whatever the fuck it was, for a million bucks? I mean, the millionaire's already jammed your wife, man, keep the cash!" - On why he turned down Woody Harrelson's part in Indecent Proposal (1993).
- "I guess I went a little nuts. But I knew I didn't want to be at the (movie) premiere with 500 people 6 months down the line, embarrassed by my physical condition. So I developed a program that was Olympic in its intensity. Eight hours a day, six days a week, combining martial arts, yoga, weight lifting, running, swimming, and stationary bike. I went to Maui 'cause I had to be in tropical climate to burn the fat. I brought my chef who had the difficult task of preparing three meals a day with no salt, no fat, no red meat, no cholesterol, and still keeping it interesting, you know? Maybe a plate of steam for breakfast." - On how (and why) he got so muscular and fit for the Rambo sequence in Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993).
- I did that garbage film with my brother (Men at Work (1990)) That didn't work. I did an action movie Navy Seals (1990). That didn't work. I did a buddy cop picture (The Rookie (1990)) with Clint Eastwood. I figured that one was a shoo-in. It was an honor to work with Clint. I don't know what happened. I must have caught him one movie to early. Not to make excuses, but 600,000 of Clint's biggest fans were in the Persian Gulf fighting a war when The Rookie (1990) came out. That's a poor excuse for a flop, isn't it?
- "I was just tired - and sick and tired of being sick and tired, of living like a vampire." - On qutting drinking.
- "Paula is a sweet lady and a great addition to the family. I'm not really familiar with her music, and I've said this to her face. We had a party at the house for my sister, Renee, and (my) Dad said, 'Charlie, put on some Paula Abdul, I don't own any of her records'. So I replied, 'I've been playing them so much, they're all worn out, they scratch and skip all over the place it would be an embarrassment'. Paula didn't buy it for an instant." - 1993 quote, during the time Paula Abdul was married to his brother Emilio Estevez.
- "Maybe for me and my peers, we've gotten a lot of power too quickly. I'm not a celebrity. I don't sing or dance, so I act. All the public sees is the autograph signing and the sunglasses. They don't see the 16-hour days, the last-minute rewrites and the hell that goes into movies." (1989 Quote)
- "Three for the Road (1987) was a piece of shit that I wished didn't exist and that I was terrible in".
- I'm very fortunate in that I like people or I'd probably be in jail right now. It takes more time explaining why you can't give an autograph, which is usually bullshit, than to just do it. I like to sign autographs of pictures because you're giving people something back for supporting you. Somewhere down the line somebody may think you treated them well and buy a ticket to your film.
- "I collect guns and shoot them regularly. It's all purely recreational shooting, I believe in the right to bear arms. I'm beside myself on the banning of the semi- automatic assault rifle. Guns don't kill people, people do. I don't carry a gun, but I respect them. I always take a gun on location because you never know. " (1989)
- All actors want to be athletes, and all athletes want to make movies. It's a strange situation when I meet up with a baseball player -- one of my heroes -- and all he wants to talk about is movies and all I want to talk about is baseball. To this day I cannot accept the fact that baseball players are as interested in what I do as I am in what they do. So I'm making movies -- big deal! They're playing major league baseball. That's the ultimate. They're in 'The Show'. I know I'm in the entertainment business, but it's not like facing Rob Dibble or Nolan Ryan, where you have to come through on the spot. If I screw up a line, well, I get as many takes as I need to nail the sucker. If it means 10 takes, fine. But if a hitter goes 1 for 10 it's another story -- he's only batting .100, and that's not going to cut it in the bigs.
- "The bad part is that there's a lot of waiting, a lot of sitting around, a lot of down time. It's hard to keep the energy level up. We're all human and it's just impossible." - On film acting.
- She was a sweet girl, but when she grew up I started to have a crush on her which lasts to this day. I also chose her film name. She was known as Horowitz and I said she should change it. We were listening to a lot of Doors music, including the tracks Riders On The Storm, and I said she should change her name to Rider with a Y. The next thing, she's Winona Ryder. No one believes me, but that's the truth.
- "There was a time when I couldn't leave the house until I'd smoked three joints, taken tranquilisers and drunk a bottle of Bourbon. So this is my last chance to get things right. People usually go into my sort of therapy for a month then come out and slowly try to adjust their lives. The fact that I'm in for five months shows how much work I've had to do." (1999)
- If I've learned anything at all, it's that I know nothing about women. They remain a mystery. But I've learned to stop trying to figure them out. There's no end to the journey, and that's what makes it so compelling.
- The hardest were those first 30 days sober. Then, three months and six months. But if I compare the amount of time I've been sober to the amount of time I've partied, well, let's just say I've still got a lot of catching up to do. Staying sober is the most important thing in my life, along with my family and loved ones. The movies, TV, money and all the other crap is just secondary.
- I don't really hang out with a lot of people anymore. In the past I always had to surrounded myself with a crowd. Today, I just don't need it. But while my life might seem dull to some, it's exciting to me. That's because through my sobriety, I'm finally able to enjoy a level of serenity that I've witnessed in other people but never had myself. And that kind of self-contentment can't be purchased or acquired. It has to be earned. I'm trying to earn it. Everyday.
- The only thing I didn't do was shoot heroin. When I was ten years old, I told myself that I'd never do heroin because one of two things would happen -- I'd do it once and die or I'd do it once and then do it every day for the rest of my life. I guess I should have made that same decision about all the other drugs.
- I still want just one at-bat in the Major Leagues. Just one. I'll take it over an Oscar. Then, I'm in the Baseball Encyclopedia. Forever. Forever. Even if I strike or walk.
- I have 12 tattoos, and I wish I hadn't gotten so many now. It's hard when you have to take your shirt off two hours in make-up and it doesn't cover them.
- I drank, toward the end, two or three bottles of vodka a day. I wouldn't drink the whole day; I'd drink about every hour and a half. A big water glass full of vodka. That would get me through the next couple of hours.
- "I nearly died, which is about as bad as you can get. I'm totally convinced that drugs and alcohol brought me very close to death two or three times, and it's more luck than anything else that I'm still alive. My spirit was dying and I believe when your spirit dies, it's only a matter of time before your body follows." - On his near fatal drug overdose.
- "It was a rough time for me. I was living that New York nightlife. Fame had arrived, it was a fresh thing and everybody was my best friend. It didn't matter if I had a 6 A.M. call, as long as the bar was serving until 4 A.M. I was there. I had to learn to do more than just try to make it to lunch. Fortunately, I realized that I've got a job a million other guys would die for and the responsibility to the money-paying public to give it my best shot." - On filming Wall Street (1987).
- "In sobriety they teach you to think the drink through. Don't just think about having the drink and how good it's going to feel. Think through to the next morning, how it's going to influence you, the shame, how it's going to trigger the domino effect. If I do that I end up with, OK, I'm not going to drink. It's the same thing with one-night stands. I appreciate my time in the mornings so much that I'd rather go to bed at night alone than deal with waking up, creeping around the bedroom, being quiet, worrying. Also, I'd like to be with somebody I care about. Something moderately substantial." - Quote from 2001.
- Sometimes it's work, sometimes it's that something extra. I'm not going to lie to you, there are times you show up on the set and have two lines, and you simply walk through. It's just work. Then there are certain scenes and moments, based on the intensity or intent of what you're trying to pull off, that call for more of an all- out effort. That's when you bring out your best.
- One of my fondest memories is when Slash, from Guns N' Roses, sat me down at his house and said, 'You've got to clean up your act.' You know you've gone too far when Slash is saying, 'Look, you've got to get into rehab, you have to shut it down. You're going to die.' He's a terrific guy and I love him, he's a buddy of mine, but I had to step back from that situation and go, 'Yeah, but you're Slash. Whaddya mean?' We'd been up for about four days. But I still heard him because a part of me was saying, 'This isn't as much fun as I thought it was going to be. Something's missing.'
- Fame is a fickle mistress. It's very deceiving. It looks really bitchin' from the outside, and then you get it and it's very confusing professionally, socially, emotionally. It's confusing because you're so worried about how you're perceived. A lot of my exploits were guilt-driven, shame-driven. I would hang out with the lower- class individual and try to give away as much as possible, because on some level I felt like I hadn't really earned all I had, and when was everyone going to find out? When would the curtain be yanked back? And all this because one day I was a working actor, just trying to pursue something I enjoyed and trying to make a living, and the next day I was a commodity.
- You see, my brother [Emilio Estevez] didn't go as nuts as I did when he started getting that first taste of it all. I just thought that's what you're supposed to do. You become a fucking overnight success and suddenly everything's free. Everybody wants to be your best friend. It's amazing and dangerous: The more money you make, the more things people want to give you for free. It should be the opposite. It's very easy to get caught up with that fast life. Once you understand that you have to pay your way, you begin to handle your success and life.
- "He brings a reality to his work that's beyond what is required, and I think it takes the audience to another place. He tortures himself doing it, but God bless him, because that work exists forever. It's educational, watching his stuff. He teaches us about taking risks and about letting go of self, of celebrity, ego and all that crap we hang on to in front of the camera. Sean just says, 'That's not what I'm here for.' " - On Sean Penn.
- "You can go to the best restaurant in town with no reservation, at peak mealtime with seven friends, and say, 'We're hungry.' Then you could leave that meal, call a guy on the way to the airport to fire up a jet to take you to Vegas, go to a casino with nothing -no wallet, nothing and talk a casino manager into giving you a $50,000 line of credit." - On the lifestyle you can have as a young, hot movie star.
- "I remember thinking and feeling and believing that I was not able to stop, that I genuinely was incapable of putting an end to this. It wasn't even that I didn't know what to do with myself if I could stop. I didn't take the thought that far. It was, 'My God, I can't stop. Now what?' Not, 'OK, if I stop?' That was a terribly sad reality." - On his drug and alcohol abuse.
- At age 16. I was arrested for possession of marijuana. Then I was arrested again a year later for this five-day crime spree, where I'd go to the Beverly Hills Hotel and tell people that I'd been a guest and lost my term paper. They'd let me look through the trash, where I'd find all these credit-card receipts and use the numbers to make phone orders.
- "Yeah, I'd get an eye tuck or a chin tuck. A lot of my job is how you look." - On if he would ever consider plastic surgery.
- "I'd never smoked but Oliver wanted me to smoke in the film. 'Better start early,' he said. 'That way you won't be sick when we're shooting.' So I did. And now I find it hard to stop. I guess you pay a price for everything." (LA Times December 1986)
- There is such a thing as too much fun. It gets redundant. How many times can you wake up and struggle to remember your name, her name and where you are?
- "At first it was about really living that lifestyle that I had envisioned, that I had really hoped for. I'd hoped to be a very recognizable celebrity. I thought thats what it was all about: the women, money, the fame, all the the bull****. When you get in it when you're suddenly in the eye of the storm, its not as good as it looks like from the outside. Its not as appealing as it looked when I would hang out with Emilio or Tom (Cruise) or Judd (Nelson) the guys who were going through it when I was still on my way up." (SV Entertainment 1991)
- "There is this one tabloid reporter I know. She gets some germ of a rumor and expounds on it. She just goes nuts. I finally called and a asked what her problem was. She said, Well, honey, we are trying to create this bad-boy image for you, and it sells issues.I tried to reason with her by asking how she would feel if she was the target of those stories. Basically, she told me that the newspaper was trying to perpetuate a James Dean image for me. I lost it and said, Lady, James Dean died at 24, and that's not the image I want. It made no difference. They are hopeless." (Penthouse 1993)
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