Quotes

[on winning the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in American Beauty (1999))] This has definitely been the highlight of my day.

[on American Beauty (1999)] I read the screenplay and nearly fell out of bed. I thought I better meet him quick before someone else read it.

[on assumptions by women that he is gay (NOTE: In 2017 he admitted that he was gay after years of unconfirmed speculation)] For them it's a challenge. They want to be the one to turn me around. I let them.

My idea of credibility is primarily self-imposed and it all relates to the thing that I've been interested in as an actor and a director, which is what are you WILLING to live with as a human being? And there's things I'm just not willing to live with--and I won't. And if it means that I stop and find something else in life that interests me or challenges me, so be it.

The less you know about me, the easier it is to convince you that I am that character on screen. It allows an audience to come into a movie theatre and believe I am that person.

Success is like death. The more successful you become, the higher the houses in the hills get and the higher the fences get.

Beyond the Sea (2004) is not a linear story at all. It's not what people will expect and it's not a biopic. It's my statement.

[2/22/05 interview in "Women's World"] If you're lucky enough to do well, it's your responsibility to send the elevator back down.

I was beginning to feel I just didn't want to go through another ten years of living in hotels, making three or four movies a year. I long for the ritual of theater. I adore it. And I want to do plays that challenge me.

The movies are not my first priority--the theater is.

If you look at how most artistic beginnings have been greeted in this country [UK], I'm in very good company. I know I'm a bigger target as long as I'm seen as a Hollywood movie star instead of as an actor of the theater, even an artistic director. They don't accept that I come in to work here every day, and have done for the last 2-1/2 years, and will continue to do so.

There is no prize out there. The only prize is this one, and what you feel and what you want to accomplish. And if you can, as you start out, these what could be lean years or could be fat years. I feel that I very often watch a lot of young people sort of meander around without any idea about why they're doing what they're doing. I mean to want and to be ambitious and to want to be successful is not enough. That's just desire. To know what you want, to understand why you're doing it, to dedicate every breath in your body to achieve . . . If you feel you have something to give, if you feel that your particular talent is worth developing, is worth caring for then there's nothing you can't achieve.

As far as I'm concerned, when I looked at what happened in my career in 2000--after American Beauty (1999)--I thought it couldn't get much better. What was I going to spend the rest of my life doing? Trying to top myself? Trying to stay hot, trying to make sure I was in the right movies? I don't give a shit. I'm trying to do something with my success which is bigger than myself. I'm no longer interested in my personal career. I am interested in the impact I can have on a lot of other people's careers and on audiences.

John Normington was a remarkable talent and all of us at the Old Vic are deeply saddened by his passing. We were fortunate to have John in the company of "The Entertainer", where so many audiences had the chance to see his extraordinary performance as Archie Rice's father. John brought a wide range of experience to his characters throughout a diverse and successful career that touched the lives of all who worked with him. We were honored to have enjoyed John's company for as long as we had him. His spirit and influence remained throughout and now that same spirit joins the other great actors who have played the Old Vic stage, where he will always be remembered with admiration and affection. They don't make them like him anymore. We send our love and condolences to John's partner, family and friends.

[as Artistic Director of London's Old Vic Theatre] I'm living my dream. I'm doing it the way I want to do it. I'm working with an extraordinary group of people at that theatre who are dedicated and who really have in so many ways helped us discover what our ethos is.

I was doing a play called "The Iceman Cometh" at the Old Vic, and in the middle of the quietest moment of the second act, a phone started ringing. I felt the anger starting in my toes and it came right out of my mouth, as loud as anything else I'd said on the stage, I looked out to the audience and said, "Tell them we're busy!" And it got a round of applause.

I love living in London. I can say with all sincerity that London is my home. This is my seventh year in London, fifth season at the Old Vic. I will never renounce being American but there is a part of me that is British now. I may go for dual citizenship, who knows?

[on traveling to Africa with Bill Clinton in 2002] He invited me. It was an opportunity to go to Africa, which I'd always been fascinated by. He's the first president to go there while he was in office. He went to raise money and awareness for a number of issues: AIDS, debt, economic relief. We went to seven different countries in ten days--Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, and then to the town of Johannesburg for an event with [Nelson Mandela]. It was just a remarkable experience.

[on undertaking dark roles] They're great parts! These are the parts audiences love to hate! First of all, you don't play a villain. You play a person who is doing things they think are quite justified. It's not one thing that makes a person do something. It's a lifetime of experience and motivations and relationships and terrors. We too often, conveniently and cutely, try to label everything so that we understand it, and there are things we'll never fucking understand. ever. All we can do is just watch them.

[on Se7en (1995)] I liked it because it was such a dangerous script and showed just what human beings are capable of. Here was a movie in which Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt, who always win in every movie they ever do, simply don't win. I felt that was outrageous for a commercial movie . . . It's a great thriller or mystery, but on another level it's a film about the fact that, if you only look at a person through one lens, or only believe what you're told, you can often miss the truth that is staring you in the face. It's so easy for us to misperceive and see the things in others that we want to see. And when we're wrong, and often we're dead wrong, we miss the truth.

[on Albino Alligator (1996)] Directing a film was something I was yearning to do. I always wanted to see if I had the capacity to be a good storyteller.

Sometimes the person who is the most logical is the person whom we call insane.

I'm lucky if I find one movie a year that's worth doing, and when I do find one, it usually only takes 20-30 days to shoot.

I'm aware that, from the outside, this looks like I've got quite an ego.

[on House of Cards (2013) and Netflix] This is a really new perspective . . . to drop them [release the episodes] all at once but I think that's how we watch TV now. Because this is the first time they [Netflix] are doing drama, they don't even have the offices to do this compared with the other networks. I feel sorry for the makers of the third series they do--when they have the offices and [can interfere].

[on the current state of film versus TV] I was lucky to get into film at a time (the 1990s) that was very interesting for drama. But if you look now, the focus is not on the same kind of films that were made in the '90s. When I look now, the most interesting plots, the most interesting characters, they are on TV.

[on Netflix airing all 13 episodes of House of Cards (2013) at once] I think in some ways maybe this proves, with the way in which an audience has been able to find the series, that we have learned the lesson the music industry didn't learn. Give people what they want it, in the form they want it in, at a reasonable price, and they will buy it and they won't steal it.

The camera doesn't know if it's a TV camera, or a streaming camera, or. a movie camera--it is just a camera. It doesn't change our process in terms of how we work. What did change our process was that we weren't obligated or asked by Netflix to do a pilot. We were just able to get on with the story-telling from the get-go.

I'm used to people thinking I'm nuts. And you know what? I kind of love it.

[on why he hasn't made a movie since Horrible Bosses (2011)] Unless it's Martin Scorsese, and it's a really significant role, fuck off. I'm not playing someone's brother. I'm not playing the station manager. I'm not playing the FCC chairman.

[in 2014] The theater has always been dying. They've been saying that for centuries. And you know what, it just keeps limping along and doing alright. By the way, the single biggest money-making franchise in the United States is Broadway . . . I think, and this is my honest opinion, as long as people want to tell stories, and as long as people want to hear those stories, the theater will be alive and well for all time.

[in 2014, on the difference between working in film and on stage] Theater is my primary allegiance. And I've not only had such an extraordinary life in the theater, but I've also been given the incredible opportunity to have a life in film . . . But I always try to remember this: no matter how good an actor might be in [a] movie, they'll never be any better in that movie. That's it. But in theater, we can be better next Tuesday than we were this Tuesday, we can be better infinitely. It is why we call the film "Now". It's not just the first word of the first sentence of the play, it is what theater is, it's NOW, it's at this moment, it's here and it's gone. And to people who think it's the same thing every night, I always make the analogy that it's like tennis. You can go out and play tennis eight times a week. And it's always the same rules, but it's always a different game, every single time. That's what it's like, when we go on stage every night.

[in 2014] I look at the last ten years, where I've done a play every year . . . and I'd like to think that this decade has made me a better actor. All that work has prepared me to do the best work that I can do, and I'm pretty convinced that if I hadn't gone and done this, I wouldn't have been prepared for a thing like House of Cards (2013).

[on Horrible Bosses 2 (2014)] I think it is a little bit crazier. I'm very glad that almost everybody is back for it and I so love working with Jason Sudeikis and Jason Bateman and Charlie Day because being opposite them in a scene when they're riffing and they're [improvising] and they're trying different ways to do scenes, it is the hardest thing in the world not to absolutely lose your cookies. We spend most of our time laughing and any time somebody wants to pay me to come and laugh all day long, I'm there.

I am one of these actors where I believe very strongly that if you want to get a part, you have to do anything within reason to get that part. I admire Woody Allen so much. I was at a point where every time he announces a new movie, I never get an audition and nobody ever calls me to come in. I was like, "You know what? I am going to just write Woody Allen." So I introduced myself and sent him a Netflix subscription and said, "I don't know if you've seen my work, but you might want to watch this series." He wrote me back a warm and wonderful letter, and thanked me for the Netflix. He said he'd seen me play lots of different roles and said he absolutely would consider me in a film.

I was in a piano bar. Some guy was absolutely convinced that I was that musician . . . what's his name? The guy in Genesis? Phil Collins! To the point that I even put on a British accent and signed a napkin as him.

My interest is not to repeat myself. There's a danger in this business. You get known for something. Then people who make movies want you to do it again and again in their movie, except their movie isn't a good one. So I resist doing the same character. American Beauty (1999) and The Negotiator (1998) were different from each other and completely different from any film or genre I've done. They were good actor's pieces. For "Negotiator", I also thought it would be really fun to see what [Samuel L. Jackson] and I could do with the story.

I don't care about my personal acting career anymore. I'm done with it. After 10 years of making movies and doing better than I ever could have imagined, I sort of had to ask myself: 'What am I supposed to do with all of this success that I have had?'

I have always believed that the risk takers are eventually rewarded.

Am I arrogant? I've been arrogant, sure; everybody's been arrogant.

People have different reasons for the way they live their lives. You cannot put everyone's reasons in the same box.

The process of doing a play is an organic one, and the process of doing a film is totally inorganic.

Success is like death. The more successful you become, the higher the houses in the hills get and the higher the fences get.

Directing a film was something I was yearning to do. I always wanted to see if I had the capacity to be a good storyteller.

I'm not someone who's led my life trying to get publicity; I'd rather do my work and go home.

We're all victims of our own hubris at times.

If you haven't turned rebel by twenty you've got no heart; if you haven't turned establishment by thirty you've got no brains!

Over the years, I've been trying to build a relationship with an audience. I've tried to maintain as much of a low profile as I could so that those characters would emerge and their relationship with audiences would be protected.

If someone can watch an entire season of a TV series in one day, doesn't that show an incredible attention span?

Maybe there are people who are gamers who haven't seen movies I have made, or the movies I have made have made no impression on them at all.