Most inspiring actors

Acting means living, it's all I do and all I'm good at. If I weren't getting paid well, I would still be acting in a small troupe somewhere.

I really don't know what I'm doing... I don't. It's terrible. I go in there and I learn how to be like the character and do the best I can, and that's all I really do.

I believe you make your day. You make your life. So much of it is all perception, and this is the form that I built for myself. I have to accept it and work within those compounds, and it's up to me.

As you get older and ease your way into being a character actor you have to be comfortable with where you are in life and career, and I'm very comfortable with what I'm doing - working on projects I'm proud of.

Because you know, down deep in my heart, when all is said and done, I still live under the illusion that basically people think of me as an up-and-coming young actor

As long as you as an individual... can convince yourself that in order to move forward as best you can you have to be optimistic, you can be described as 'one of the faithful,' one of those people who can say, 'Well, look, something's going to happen! Let's just keep trying. Let's not give up.

I don't make demands. I don't tell you how it should be. I'll give you options, and it's up to you to select or throw 'em away. That should be the headline: If you're insecure, don't call.

Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt, that's real power

As far as the lack of hits goes, I think perhaps it's because I've played a lot of different roles and have not created a persona that the public can latch on to. I have played everything from psychopathic killers to romantic leading men, and in picking such diverse roles I have avoided typecasting.

If there's any message to my work, it is ultimately that it's OK to be different, that it's good to be different, that we should question ourselves before we pass judgment on someone who looks different, behaves different, talks different, is a different color.

Every time I try to retire, or even think of retiring from acting, my agent comes up with a script.

I think that I've still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I'd like to work on that.

The hardest part was when I was in high school not having a job and always being broke. I had to get to auditions without a car. I either took the bus or walked.

I never wanted to do the same kind of movies over and over anyway, so my theory on it all is I'm just gonna try and dodge the label and keep doing what I am doing.

Every little thing that people know about you as a person impedes your ability to achieve that kind of terrific suspension of disbelief that happens when an audience goes with an actor and character he's playing.

What's right is what's left if you do everything else wrong.

As a young actor, people were trying to define who I was before I really knew that for myself. But I still remember thinking, "This is what I love doing, and I hope I'm going to be able to do it forever."

I need to react to a script, to feel strongly about it in some way. And I need it to be a complex character for sure. And also, I think a lot about what kind of audience there is for the film, what they're looking for and ways to connect with them in the playing of a character.

Acting is a very personal process. It has to do with expressing your own personality, and discovering the character you're playing through your own experience - so we're all different.

Acting is real important to me. I love it, and it's something I care about.