There's something overwhelming about being in raw nature. It's got an aura about it is that is really kind of majestic and spiritual.
Christopher Lloyd
I got a few speeding tickets when I was young, but I'm a little more like the turtle than the hare.
A picador is the guy in a bullfight who helps make sure the matador doesn't get killed by distracting the bull. That's what TV writing is. You're just distracting the bull long enough to stick around for the next set of commercials.
I feel that I have been very fortunate and had the opportunity to play some wonderful roles and movies and worked with some great talent.
As long as I can keep remembering the lines and getting to the locations, I want to keep working as long as I can. I love it.
The time and preparation before a play is something I really value, and it's something I learned in New York.
I don't remember that I ever really went all out to come up with a costume or a persona that could compete with everyone around me. I didn't know what to do. I found Halloween scary for just that fact - it meant that I had pressure to get up and be scary, makeup and all that. That was pretty horrifying for me.
I loved doing Judge Doom in 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit.' I'm constantly running into people who saw that movie when they were kids, and it absolutely horrified them.
One of the things I like and appreciate a lot is when somebody will come up to me and tell me how much Judge Doom terrified them as little children when he takes the shoe and puts it in the dip. They were literally scared out of their minds. I love that.
I was already committed to a play back in New York about Hans Christian Andersen, where Colleen Dewhurst was going to play my mother. I was excited about that, and I got this script called 'Back to the Future,' and I thumbed through it. Didn't pay a hell of a lot of attention.
In the movie 'Star Trek 3: The Return of Spock,' I'm a really bad Klingon, and I really enjoyed playing that - somebody who's totally unscrupulous. It's like he was not genetically equipped to feel compassion or sensitivity. Just outright evil without apology.
Uncle Fester always intrigued me. I certainly always enjoyed his kind of humor. He's just full of mischief in a kind of macabre way. I don't see anything twisted about it. It's sort of ridiculous and wacky. It's sort of fun.
I sense from people that they get frustrated with me for not being out and about. But I guess I'm a shy boy.
I don't know if there are too many other trilogies with stories that have continued to captivate audiences like 'Back to the Future' has.
I'm often asked, 'What was, for you, your greatest film experience?' And it always comes back to 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,' aside from being a film that really handled subject matter in such a brilliant, brilliant way.
I don't worry too much about typecasting. I just figure, one way or another, I'm going to find another role.
Whether it's a very dramatic part or a comical role, I feel I need to create the same thing: a full-fledged, three-dimensional character that the audience can identify with.
I had kind of an attitude, which was not uncommon in New York. Theater people who went to Hollywood to do sitcoms were selling out. That was the attitude. And I didn't really relish the idea of being cast in a sitcom, because I shared that attitude.
I was just very shy. I was never anxious to do talk shows, as I didn't know what to say. And I don't feel I have any inherent interest. But as I'm getting older, I feel I want to be able to share whatever I know if it means something to someone.
Doc Brown had a feverous imagination. He was constantly coming up with new ways and solutions to various issues, and time travel was one of them. I was just very inspired by being able to portray somebody of that sort. He's a man of tremendous energy and excitement about discovery.
I like being busy.
I ventured into a world of sitcom, and I have no regrets. I loved it.
A sign that negotiations were handled well on both sides is that everybody probably feels a little bit like they didn't get what they wanted.
I'm not too picky. I'm not waiting, sitting around for the ideal and perfect role. I like to work, so I try to make the best of whatever opportunity comes up.
I get asked a lot what the key is to creating a hit show, and I have a standard answer: Do everything right, and then get lucky 10 ways.
I've always been fascinated by real scientists - Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, and so many others - how they've come up with solutions to very complicated problems that nobody else can seem to figure out.
I meet people on the street who literally chose their careers because they saw 'Back to the Future' and decided they wanted to be scientists or astronomers or engineers.
I really enjoy playing villains, whether they're realistic like Switchblade Sam or whether they're a bit more over-the-top like Kruge in 'Star Trek III' or Judge Doom in 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit.' It's sort of a license just to be as bad as the script allows you to be - you can just go for it and have fun.
I would love to do Doc again, no question. It's tough to come up with an idea that contains the excitement of the original three. So it would be a real challenge for the writers to come up with an original 'Back to the Future' story that has the same passion and intensity and excitement as the other three. But it could be done. You never know.
I don't know exactly how I end up with some of these roles. It mystifies me sometimes, but I am a fan of sci-fi. I love being taken into a strange world, and when it's told with imagination and credibility, I love being taken on that trip. I always have.
The film 'Back to the Future' certainly did a lot to put me where I am today, and I did not foresee that. I just was hoping the film would open successfully, the first one, but it's gone way beyond what I think most of us have imagined.
I tend to avoid things like award shows and panels and interviews, not remotely because I feel I'm above them or wish to cultivate the image of the intriguing recluse. I'm just not very good at them.
On 'Frasier,' a network executive once suggested that one week we have John Lithgow play Frasier and Kelsey Grammar play Lithgow's role on '3rd Rock From the Sun;' I've been deeply afraid of the idea of a crossover ever since.
When I come onto a show where I haven't met any actors, I try to zero in on the script and what's expected of the character I'm going to play and hopefully keep my focus on that, and friendships develop from that.
I love watching film. I love watching stories. I watch the people in them... Even, sometimes, films that nobody else can watch - 'How could you look at that? It's lousy' - I can look at it and be totally into it.
There is certainly a higher percentage of wit in British comedy than in American comedy. What always tickles me is the way in which people try to use their intellect to get themselves out of tricky situations but never quite manage to do so - much to their enormous embarrassment.
I'm somewhat of a solitary person.
A lot of things you just stumble into: relationships or ways of putting characters opposite one another that really worked. So then it's not always so much about imitating other people, but imitating yourself, at least in your thinking.
In point of fact, I'm not sure there are too many comedies with laugh tracks anymore. Most of what you hear is live studio audience laughing as a show is filmed. If this prompts you to wonder who those actual human beings are who are laughing at some of this stuff, that is a mystification I share.
We live in an era now where every episode is reviewed 80 different times on the Internet by periodicals you've never even heard of.
I've worked a lot with kids before. They can be very, very difficult, just because they're kids.
I turned down a film that was offered to me in the very early '80s, a Scorsese film. That probably wasn't a good career move.
Eric Stoltz was a very good actor.
I don't like to repeat myself.
'Hamlet' was the first movie I saw. In 1948, my mother said, 'I'm going to take you to see 'Hamlet' with Laurence Olivier.' She was worried about taking me to it because she wasn't sure I was old enough to understand it or to maybe be adversely affected by it, but I got recordings of it and memorized all the soliloquies.
Every role I get is always a challenge. I can read a script and say, 'Oh, I can do that!' and then when I start working on it, I suddenly realize that I had no idea what I was getting into. Then I have to really work hard!
'Cuckoo's Nest' was my first film, and I had wanted to do film for some time, but somehow I had not clicked. I would go in for interviews or readings, and I never had the sense that I was anywhere near what they were looking for.
'Cuckoo's Nest' came along, and I was cast, and that was great, but it was my first film, so I felt like I was kind of walking around on the set as Walk-On A.
Some people have quick retention. I'm not one of those.
Time travel is a fantasy we all have. The 'Back to the Future' series really exploits that wish.
