Great teachers are the ones who inspire you.
Martin Landau
Life is a roller coaster. There are ups; there are downs. There are hills; there are valleys, peaks, and so on.
A good director makes a playground and allows you to play.
I always tried to play the bad guys as guys who didn't know they were bad guys. There are villains we run into all the time, but they don't think they are doing anything wrong. If they do, they think they are cunning and smart. When people break laws and ethical rules, they justify it in their own terms.
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.
I could play a lot of things. And it's hard for people and logically hard and understandably hard for people to think of me for certain roles.
I started teaching when I was in my 20s because Lee Strasberg asked me to, and he didn't do that with a lot of people.
My mantra is 'stay perpendicular.' Horizontal is not as good.
How a character hides his feelings tells us something about him.
I've got two daughters, and it's impossible for me to say one of them is a favorite.
All 'Hamlets' are different, and it's the most overwritten play ever written.
Harry Dean Stanton, Anjelica Huston - a lot of people have studied with me. It's paying my dues.
You can have immediate regrets, but if you look at stuff and say, 'Things happen for a reason', there's a fatalistic thing about it. Something will happen that will justify it in some way.
I did 12 shows in 13 weeks at a summer theater in Maine where we were paid $35 a week. After taxes and $25 for room and board, I had enough money for a pack of cigarettes and a bowl of lobster bisque.
I did a picture called 'Lovely, Still' with Ellen Burstyn, We screened it to the AARP people in Las Vegas, 2000 of them. We got a standing ovation from people who couldn't stand.
'North by Northwest' took two and a half to three months to film. When I look back, I realise I wasn't intimidated by Hitchcock and Cary Grant. They were so accepting of me.
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.
Bad guys don't think they're bad guys. Hitler probably thought he was a wonderful guy doing some wonderful and righteous work for Germany.
I've got so many stories about every film and show I've ever been in.
I did theatrical caricatures.
I don't know anybody who's any good who isn't nuts.
Actors need to trust themselves. If you trust yourself, you can trust others and leave the director outside.
I hung around with Jason Robards, Richard Harris, Robert Shaw, Richard Burton. I knew not to match them for drinks.
Subliminally, I had always wanted to act. Although I had only performed in a couple of plays, I was serious about it and was subsequently trained by people like Lee Strasberg and Elia Kazan.
The more complicated the character, the better I am. It's the one-dimensional crap that I had to do for years that drove me crazy.
I'm usually cast by people who are oddly goofy.
A lot of the bad guys I've played just haven't had much dimension to them.
I create each character as an individual, coming from a certain place, sounding a certain way, having been introduced to things a certain way.
I've always been interested in science fiction.
I've worked with a lot of wooden actors in my day, but Pinocchio is the best.
I had hair down to my shoulders, a beard and mustache. I was crude and rude.
I was offered the Gene Hackman role in 'The Poseidon Adventure' four times, and I turned it down four times. I didn't want to do that movie. I called it the upside down boat.
There are not many A-list directors who get to make the movies they want to make. I know two: Woody Allen and Tim Burton. Two different textures, but both get to do what they want, and that's rare.
Ageism is something that does exist.
I look for roles where there is some kind of an arc to the story.
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.
The real good comedians, like Chaplin, would make you laugh and a second later, cry.
They made a fatal mistake in doing 'Psycho' again. Why do that? Why revisit something that stands for itself?
Jimmy Dean was my best friend.
A lot of the time with an independent production, you go onto the set, and you rehearse it in front of the crew, and at that point, the cinematographer takes over. You start accommodating the camera instead of the camera accommodating you.
Sergio Leone came to see me when I was doing 'Mission Impossible.' He wanted me to do 'A Fistful of Dollars.' I turned him down. I didn't want to get stuck as a stoic Western movie star.
Nobody knew me. They just knew that I was the guy from 'Mission: Impossible.'
Agents have enormous power that studios relinquished to them. The studios, when I first came to Hollywood, that's where the power was.
When someone is there for you, has your back, that's somebody to pay attention to because that's a friend.
Everything that has happened to me is of value to me. As painful as certain things are, and have been, and were, there's a use for those things in my life and in my work.
I always treat each take as a rehearsal for the next take. That way you can find stuff and keep adding and playing until they tell me to stop.
I'm very proud of Space 1999. Its success paved the way for other sci-fi shows to follow. My hope is that the DVD release will help it reach a new generation of fans.
People think I'm a very serious actor, which I am. But you know, if you don't have a sense of humor doing what I do, you perish.
It's good to make people laugh.
The Italian tough guys, dey talk real deep like dis down in dere chests... while the Irish speak way high-ah, up here in their heads.
