- (On how he selects his roles)" I don't choose that much. I just sort of take what's there. I don't have much else to do. I don't have a lot of hobbies. I don't play golf. I don't have any children. Things that occupy people's time. I just try to take jobs. I basically work so much because I'm lazy."
- "Careers are not often as chosen as people think they are. People talk to me about my choices. I don't make choices, hardly. Things happen, and you say yes or no - usually 'yes', because it's always better to do something. What's the choice? Somebody will say, 'Don't do that part, you don't need to do that part.' And I'll say, 'Why not? What am I going to do? Sit around the house? I'd much rather go to work, and see actors, and have fun."
- "I'd love to do a character with a wife, a nice little house, a couple of kids, a dog, maybe a bit of singing, and no guns and no killing, but nobody offers me those kind of parts."
- "I won't do commercials either. I don't want to sell anything. As an actor, it's tricky. You have this platform and it has to do with your face, your charisma. It's tricky when you endorse something because people are liable to believe you. Be careful."
- "I would make a very bad killer in real life because I don't think I could even pick up a gun, much less actually shoot one. Guns make me very nervous. They're dangerous. I'm more of a pacifist than anyone could imagine.
- "I don't particularly like to do anything dangerous. And here I was in Bangkok . I was in the jungle and in the mountains. Being an actor has taken me places that I never would have gone to . It's been a very interesting life." ~ Filming The Deer Hunter
- "Acting has to do with saying it as if you meant it, so for me the words are always very important. It's very important for me to know my lines, know them so well that I don't have to think about them."
- "I think that when I play these villains, maybe what is different is that the audience sees me play these and they know that that's Chris and he's having fun and he knows that and he knows that and you know that and everybody knows that."
- "I think early on I knew what I was going to do and it was based a lot on familiarity but it was also because I didn't have a lot of skills. There was nothing I wanted t be. I didn't want to be a doctor. I wanted to be in show business."
- "I think if you do something effectively whether you're the lover or the comic or the action guy or the villain like I play; movies are very expensive to make. Chances are you'll get asked to play that part again."
- "I try not to worry about things I can't do anything about."
- "One thing that's happened to me is I've been around a long time and I've played a lot of villains and so forth. I think it had to do with, well one thing is that I looked younger than I was for a long time. Now I think I'm suddenly starting to play people's father."
- "Yeah, well I've always played comedy. My background is musical comedy theatre and that's really where my training is. As an actor, that's my training."
- "People always comment about my hair. It is unusual for a man my age to have so much."
- (On why he hates to not be working) "When I don`t have any work sometimes, a kind of thing sets in where my mind shuts down. It`s almost like hibernation. It`s not that I`m unhappy, but I`m not thinking anything. Then I`ll go and watch television. And after an hour or two, I`ll think, `You`re just sitting there watching television and it`s not even interesting.` And there`s nothing to do. Life becomes meaningless."
- "I`ve always been a character actor, although I`m not quite sure what that means. All my scripts are absolutely covered in notes, so any time I say anything - even `pass the salt` - I have six subtexts, comments on what I really mean when I`m saying that. Maybe that`s what gives the impression that I`m saying one thing and thinking something else."
- "I have been in movies that I thought I wasn`t very good in. I think, Chris, don`t let your mouth hang open like that next time. Look at that facial tic. Don`t walk in such a self-conscious way! But sometimes, I watch myself and I think that I am terrific - and that is really nice."
- "I eat the same things all the time: fish, hardly ever meat. Chicken, vegetables. I`m fond of steamed sea bass over leeks. I don`t drink hard liquor. I like wine."
- (On Pulp Fiction) "I put aside an hour every day to go over that monologue again and again for months, and every time I got to the end of it, I would crack up."
- "I`ve enjoyed making movies for lots of different reasons. Sometimes, it was the other people. Sometimes, it was the fact that I was really good in it. Sometimes, it was the location. Sometimes, it was the paycheck. Sometimes, it can be lots of different things, or a lot of those things. Or there can be reasons why you`d like to avoid it the next time. Like the jungle. I`ve made a couple of movies in the jungle, and I don`t want to go back to the jungle."
- "I used to be prettier than I am, but I think I look better now. I was a pretty boy. Particularly in my early movies. I don`t like looking at them so much. There`s a sort of pretty thing about me."
- (On his process of acting) "You know. it`s really tricky. People have no idea. How do you do it? Most of the time I don`t. I mean, I can`t. You just do it as well as you can. And, hopefully, you did some good stuff here and some good stuff there. The best part is going home in the car at the end of the day, and thinking, `I was good.`
- "Is typecasting really a problem?"
- "Emotional power is maybe the most valuable thing that an actor can have."
- "I believe in saving money. I believe in having a house. I believe in keeping things clean. I believe in exercising," he says. "Slow and steady is a very good thing for me. It works for me."
- "Bear costumes are funny. Bears as well. "
- "At its best, life is completely unpredictable."
- "I was already 35 years old, and I`d been in show business for 30-plus years, and suddenly there was this big movie and I was getting an Oscar, and this enormous thing happened," he says. "In Annie Hall (1977), I played the strange brother who wanted to drive into oncoming cars. Immediately after that was The Deer Hunter (1978), where I played this nice guy who shoots himself in the head. Something happened there. The fact that they came so close together, and they were both important movies, two big public things where I was simultaneously , `disturbed.` That got the ball rolling for me in terms of being an actor."
- "Back home, I do the same things every day. Exactly the same. I eat at the same time, I get up at the same time, I do the same things in the same order. I read. I have coffee. Then I study my scripts, I exercise on the treadmill, I make myself a little something to eat. I am a great believer in the Mediterranean diet."
- "What I used to do was, I`d get the script and see who the character was - a spy, a lumberjack, whatever - then I`d try to dress the part for the audition, to give the impression that I was tough or funny or whatever the part seemed to call for. That was always a disaster. I would never get the job. If I learned anything it`s not to do anything like that. Now if they want to look at me, I go in and let them look at me. Let them figure out their own reasons for why they`d want to hire me."
- "My hair was famous before I was."
- "I make movies that nobody will see. I`ve made movies that even I have never seen."
- "I`m serious. I do not like the unknown or the unexpected. I cannot stand being surprised, yet as an actor I like surprise. I get very upset if my bills aren`t paid immediately."
- "I can`t imagine being somebody else. And anything I play, my reference is completely from the planet Showbusiness. I don`t know anything about anybody else, people that I`ve known all my life - my family, my brothers - I don`t know. I only know about me."
- (On guns) "I don`t even like holding them. Whenever I hold a gun, I want to get it out of my hand as quick as possible."
- "If you want to learn how to build a house, build a house. Don`t ask anybody, just build a house."
- (On his routine) "I get up early, at six or seven, and have coffee. I usually read in the morning. And then, if I have a script, I do that for a while. Then I exercise at a certain time. About noon. I like to cook, so usually, I`ll be making something. And I have my script. My favourite thing is to have two scripts. It`s great to study two things at the same time."
- (On how he memorizes his lines and mentally prepares himself for each role) "What I do has a lot to do with the words. My favorite thing is to have two scripts at the same time, and study them simultaneously in the kitchen. Go over the words, over and over, do them different ways, different inflections and rhythms. For me, rhythm is very important. I think we express ourselves as much with rhythm as with the words. It`s not what you say, it`s how you say it. I think it`s very true. If you start to say your lines and it sounds right, usually I stick with that. If it sounds right, it probably is right. It`s curious, how you`re not collaborating with anyone at that point, and by the time you get there with other actors on the set, usually what you`ve done at home makes sense, and it`s acceptable to everybody. The thing I have trouble with, because I`m so dependent on knowing my lines, is that if suddenly somebody says, Here`s a big speech. You`re going to do that instead," I get lost. At that point, I understand why Marlon Brando loves cue cards."
- "I think that a good movie creates its own world, and that world needn`t refer to anything that`s real. If it`s consistent, if it`s entertaining, if it`s interesting, it justifies its being there."
- "I would like to be a very old man and still be acting. So I feel lucky to have stuck around for this long. You have to be good and all that, but you also have to be lucky. I guess in everything. But especially if you`re an actor. So I got no complaints."
- "I always think that in movies or on stage, two people can be talking to each other - the audience doesn`t necessarily have to know what they`re talking about, just so long as they know that you know what you`re talking about."
- "There were years when I didn`t do anything but collect unemployment. I worked a lot, but I worked for nothing. I worked for 15 years as a kind of janitor at the Actors Studio. I would do manual things. I did lots of plays, theater workshops, for nothing."
- (On if he does research to prepare for a role) "No. The soul is in the words, comes from the words, not research. Research is useless, waste of time. And exhausting. I just don`t know how to do it. I only know my own experiences. People are completely mysterious to me. Even in my own family I have no idea what any of them are thinking."
- "With stage fright you keep on doing it and eventually the fear goes away. If you stick around long enough you become very hard to intimidate. It is very difficult to make me nervous about working these days. There have been so many times when I thought I was finished, but it was not true - you just keep going. I am scared of sickness, pollution and crazy people but, work-wise, there is nothing to frighten me."
- "I have this theory about words. There`s a thousand ways to say `Pass the salt.`It could mean, you know, `Can I have some salt?`; or it could mean, `I love you.`; It could mean `I`m very annoyed with you`; really, the list could go on and on.; Words are little bombs, and they have a lot of energy inside them."
- (On how he chooses parts) "Lots of things. The script, the directors, the location, the actors, how much are they going to pay me? How long is it going to take?"
- "I think that movie sets when they`re good, are a lot like sandboxes."
- "When you`re an actor, you do a lot of the same kind of thing. It`s great when someone gets you to do something that`s a little surprising."
- "When videotape came so a lot of movies that I do have a kind of afterlife in video. Things where movies that I do would come and go; they still come and go but you can go rent them and see them on TV."
- "When I was a kid I joined the circus. I did that. It is true. But it`s not like you think. There was a guy, he had his own circus. His name was Carol Jacobs and he owned it. It was a small thing."
- "When I know that, if I have no inspiration whatsoever, when I come and I just feel empty, I have nothing, I know that I can still play the scene."
- "The minute I start to talk about acting, I realize that I can`t. You know, it`s an abstract thing, a little bit mysterious even if you do it for a living."
- "The best thing for me is, when I`m not working, is to be at home and to have a script or two scripts is better, and to be just walking around the house and just thinking about the lines."
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