Personal Quotes The problem with me is, I guess, the way I express myself, you have to be with me 50 years before you can get a sense of what I'm talking about.
I can't say I've been sober though. I don't like that word. What does it mean? 'Sober! He's very sober'.
There are times when I have a temperament. Yes, my temperament is there ... but I hope I'm gentle. Yes, I think I am.
When I try to explain anything I always end up trying to be right usually, but not truthful necessarily. Trying to give the right answer or what I think is the right answer. It's a human instinct. You try to be as clever as you can be. You're trying to come off like you really know what the hell's going on, when you don't!
I'm single and I don't particularly like it. I'm certainly the kind of person who prefers ... it ... it ... It's good to have someone in your life that you're going through this thing with. It's good. That's a thing in life that I aspire to.
I like what
Norman Mailer said about alcohol: 'Drink has killed a lot of my brain cells and I think I would have been a better writer without it, but it would be one less way to relax.'
Did you know I started out as a stand-up comic? People don't believe me when I tell them.
[on whether acting and his roles reflected who he is] In the end you're just playing a role.
I'll tell you something. And this is a fact. When I was doing
Scarface (1983), I remember being in love at that time. One of the few times in my life. And I was so glad it was at that time. I would come home and she would tell me about her life that day and all her problems and I remember saying to her, 'Look, you really got me through this picture', because I would shed everything when I came home.
That's right! That's right! We know the best feeling in the world is the one between the second and third martini. That was my deal. I just enjoyed who I became when I was drinking, so that was something hard to break. I became much quieter, and funny. I must say, that kind of thing came out.
I hope the perception is that I'm an actor, I never intended to be a movie star.
I'm constantly striving to break through to something new. You try to maintain a neutral approach to your work, and not be too hard on yourself.
I guess you find yourself repeating certain motifs. But at the heart of it all, I'm an actor, always looking for a role. And then you try to make things fresh.
People always said that time, the '70s, was about pretty boys, and then I came along!
One hopes to find out about the [movie] you're in while you're doing it, not several years later, which is usually when I find out. I'm like, 'Wow, that was a dud! I didn't know, nobody would tell me!' I've done things for certain reasons, but it [comes from] thinking on your feet... Sometimes actors do things not because we have a great desire [for it], but because it's work, and I'm starting to wonder about that.
But I was just lucky. People like [
Francis Ford Coppola] were making films, and I got opportunities.
[quoted by
Robert Osborne in "Academy
Awards 1974 Oscar Annual"] I couldn't exist just doing films. But on the other hand, there is the fame that comes with it, and the money. My problem is I still want to play Hamlet in some little theater somewhere, and time is running out.
[Presenting the Lifetime of Achievement
Award to director
Sidney Lumet at the 2005 Academy
Awards] As an old village poet put it to me in the 1960s. [If you dig it, it's yours]. I dug
Sidney Lumet back then. I dig him now because what he had to give, I took and made it mine. I'm forever grateful along with all the other actors and writers who have benefited from Sidney's genius.
[on his friend and
Heat (1995) co-star
Robert De Niro] We know each other's minds. We have shared some things that are personal to us, such as our roles. I know Bobby through his roles. But, then, I don't think we actually talked about the actual work of actors.
[on his friend and
Heat (1995) co-star
Robert De Niro] I remember seeing things that Bob had done in the past, and very recent times, and have been taken with the work so much that I even wrote [him] about it. Some of his great work -- which is plenty -- I was staggered by the subtlety of his portrayal and the warmth, which is what we often talk about with Bob among us actors who admire him so. It is the warmth and the way he approaches things.
[on doing
Scarecrow (1973) with
Gene Hackman] Gene and I are two people not very similar. We had to play a very close relationship, but I just didn't think we were as connected as we should have been. We seemed apart. We didn't have altercations, we didn't hate each other. But we didn't communicate, didn't think in the same terms. Gene and I were thrown together, but under ordinary circumstances we'd never cavort or be friends. It was two worlds - but I have to say that I was as much responsible as he was.
[On whether or not acting is still challenging for him] The challenge? It's always a challenge of a sort. It's a challenge to get up and go and leave your family and go out there in all different parts of the world and do a picture and try to make it come alive . . . You're still challenged for that. I mean, it's the same story. It's just not changed. It seems to be the same thing it always was. It's this effort. If you get excited about a thing then things are generally a little easier. If you get enthusiastic and you want to do something and you feel you are into something then things start to come. But usually to find the enthusiasm and the appetite, that's the challenge.
[On why his film
Chinese Coffee (2000) has yet to be released] 'Coffee' is done, I got a couple of little important things to do about it, like little tiny things, and THEN I will unveil it. It's not a movie that you put in a . . . it needs a certain environment to flourish in. It's just the way it is. It doesn't make it better or worse than the picture. It's just the way it is, the nature of it.
I've always believed, I always hoped . . . I don't think I know what I'm saying when I say this, but I was hoping that we could have a museum where we had films. That there was a museum where films were, like, hung. Like paintings. And you went to the museum. I got the movie
The Local Stigmatic (1990) that I made. It's 52 minutes and everybody has seen it now because I've personally got them in to see it, to show it to them and I paid them for it, too. But it's over at the Museum of Modern Art and I love saying . . . This is really pretentious of me, this is what I really like. I love to say: 'Oh, it's at the Museum of Modern Art. Isn't that great?' 'Have you released it?' 'No, I never did.' I love saying that, you know? 'How come?' 'Because I didn't feel like it.' It's fun to do that.
The actor becomes an emotional athlete. The process is painful -- my personal life suffers.
"You know what the problem with that film is? The real problem? Nobody wants to see Michael have retribution and feel guilty. That's not who he is. In the other scripts, in Michael's mind he is avenging his family and saving them. Michael never thinks of himself as a gangster - not as a child, not while he is one and not afterward. That is not the image he has of himself. He's not a part of the GoodFellas thing. Michael has this code; he lives by something that makes audiences respond. But once he goes away from that and starts crying over coffins, making confessions and feeling remorse, it isn't right. I applaud Francis Coppola for trying to get to that, but Michael is so frozen in that image. There is in him a deep feeling of having betrayed his mother by killing his brother. That was a mistake. And we are ruled by these mistakes in life as time goes on. He was wrong. Like in Scarface when Tony kills Manny - that is wrong, and he pays for it. And in his way, Michael pays for it." - On _Godfather: Part III, The (1990)_
My first language was shy. It's only by having been thrust into the limelight that I have learned to cope with my shyness.
I don't understand the hatred and fear of gays and bisexuals and lesbians...it's a concept I honestly cannot grasp. To me, it's not who you love...a man, a woman, what have you...it's the fact THAT you love. That is all that truly matters.
[When asked what romantic character he would want to be] [
Pablo Picasso]. I love the idea that he used to just sit and stare at an empty canvas for as long as 12 hours straight. If you keep staring at the canvas, the hope is that something or someone will come to mind. That's a romantic notion in itself.
[When asked what a movie of his life would be called and who would play him] It would be called 'The Dustin Hoffman Story'. When we were starting out, [
Robert De Niro], me and Hoffman were always sort of mixed up. People mistook us for each other.
In America most everybody who's Italian is half Italian. Except me. I'm all Italian. I'm mostly Sicilian, and I have a little bit of Neapolitan in me. You get your full dose with me.
[on
The Godfather: Part III (1990)] You know what the problem with that film is? The real problem? Nobody wants to see Michael have retribution and feel guilty. That's not who he is. In the other scripts, in Michael's mind he is avenging his family and saving them. Michael never thinks of himself as a gangster - not as a child, not while he is one and not afterward. That is not the image he has of himself. He's not a part of the
Goodfellas (1990) thing. Michael has this code; he lives by something that makes audiences respond. But once he goes away from that and starts crying over coffins, making confessions and feeling remorse, it isn't right. I applaud [
Francis Ford Coppola] for trying to get to that, but Michael is so frozen in that image. There is in him a deep feeling of having betrayed his mother by killing his brother. That was a mistake. And we are ruled by these mistakes in life as time goes on. He was wrong. Like in
Scarface (1983) when Tony kills Manny - that is wrong, and he pays for it. And in his way, Michael pays for it.
My dad was in the army. World War II. He got his college education from the army. After World War II he became an insurance salesman. Really, I didn't know my dad very well.
[on
Julie Christie] The most poetic of actresses.
The only problem is, I don't have the appetite to make my own pictures. I don't want to direct. So I'm always in a kind of passive position, waiting for someone to come to me with a project... That I sort of don't like.
[on
Heat (1995)] I remember chasing Bobby De Niro around at 3 a.m. I didn't warm up and boom, there went my hamstring. I was like, "Great, I feel like old Al." Then I realized, "I AM old Al." I guess I have to keep in shape as I get older. But I don't like to work out.
Whenever I get the urge to exercise, I lie down until it passes.
[on
Jack Lemmon] Jack was the most selfless actor I've ever worked with. He was the most considerate and the most generous. He cared a great deal about what he was doing. He was a complete actor who gave 150 percent. But the remarkable thing about Jack was that he kept growing. So his best work was his latest work.
