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I look for roles where there is some kind of an arc to the story.
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Dialogue is what a character's willing to share and reveal to another character, and the 90% they aren't willing to share is what I do for a living.
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The average scene in a film, you have to shoot it 15, 20 times. That means you got to laugh or cry 15, 20 times.
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I don't like to sound immodest, but I believe in what I can do. Sometimes it's been frustrating because I haven't gotten to bat; if you're on the bench, and an unimaginative person doesn't see you as right for a certain role, you don't get the chance to hit the home run.
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People do not necessarily reveal what is going on - only bad actors do.
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I was very thin, exceedingly thin. If you look at 'North By Northwest,' you'll get a clue.
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As a young actor, I was working much more readily and being offered more things.
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I've always felt, pound for pound, I'm one of the best guys around; but you get stuck in people's eyes in a certain way, and it takes an imaginative director who will look at you and realize you can play different kinds of parts because you are an actor.
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I still care about human behavior and the art that it takes to write a good piece and to get a cast together who cares enough to put 150 percent of their talent into a project.
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The idea of death is something that doesn't make sense to a lot of people. But to bring something back - or vampires who never die - is a logical fantasy for a human being.
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All an audience wants to believe is that what's going on is happening for the first time.
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I always say, if I tell you a joke right now and it's funny, you laugh. Now, we set the lights, and I tell you the joke again, it's hard to find it funny the second time.
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I was being groomed to be the theatrical caricaturist. And I know if I got that job, I'd never quit. So I quit. I knew I wanted to go into the theater... I wanted to act.
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Years ago on TV, I played people like Doc Holliday and Jesse James on Westerns.
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Pictures are packaged and cast by agents.
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Mankind, his brain has embraced so many amazing things, and yet we're still beating each other over the heads with clubs, excepting the bullets now, one bullet can wipe out an entire city.
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'Mission' was a mind game. The ideal mission was getting in and getting out without anyone ever knowing we were there.
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The winners shouldn't necessarily win, and the losers shouldn't necessarily lose.
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Agents have enormous power that studios relinquished to them. The studios, when I first came to Hollywood, that's where the power was.
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Nobody knew me. They just knew that I was the guy from 'Mission: Impossible.'
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My technique has always been to include all the periphery around me.
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I don't think villains think they are villains.
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A good director makes a playground and allows you to play.
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I hung around with Jason Robards, Richard Harris, Robert Shaw, Richard Burton. I knew not to match them for drinks.