Quotes

If I don't need the money, I don't work. I don't mind going to somebody and saying, "Okay, this is how much money I need to pay my bills for the next six months. If you pay me that, I'll do the film.".

[Why did he accept the lead in Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)?] I took the film because I was interested in doing that part. Looking at work as stepping stones is something I don't have any time or energy for. It seems a shame to look at your work as some sort of means to an end, because the end is death, you know? The means is the flesh and blood, so you had better enjoy it. Fuck the end.

If I don't need the money, I don't work. I'm going to spend time with my family and friends, and I'm going to travel and read and listen to music and try to learn a little bit more about how to be a human being, as opposed to learning how to be somebody else.

Studio people are afraid of Crash (1996). It makes a statement about whoever releases the film. Miramax took a lot of flak for releasing Kids (1995). The same will happen for whoever releases Crash (1996).

I have my own artistic sensibilities and Crash (1996) complements them. It is a provocative, challenging, disturbing film made for adults. It's not a skeleton in the closet for me.

[on his sadomasochistic scenes in the movie Secretary (2002)] I did something in that scene that I'd never done in a film before but that's been the case with so many of my movies.

You just want to work. I like playing character roles and I do not mind being a real son-of-a-bitch, or embarrassing myself. But as you go along you begin to realize that the work has a criterion and as your choices get broader you start cutting out the things that are not worth the time. On the whole I have been lucky; I do not look back with a huge amount of distaste for the work I have done.

Acting is a great way to make a living, especially when I consider what my alternatives were and probably still are. I mean, you are only making movies. It is a lot less pressure than being a surgeon; although it seemed like the only other thing that I was qualified for was manual labour.

Sometimes with people their work is the most important thing to them, and sometimes the work enables you to do other things that are more important to you. I probably am closer to that.

[2005] I've had a lazy career, sometimes one film a year, sometimes none. I'm walking around in the street and doing this other thing, living, that I'm much more interested in. I just do some acting on the side.

I played cops and robbers and pirates and all the rest when I was a kid, but I didn't want to grow up and be an actor and play cops and robbers and pirates. I wanted to grow up and be that, be cops and robbers and pirates.

I grew up a Red Sox fan. I grew up going to Fenway Park and the Museum of Fine Arts and the Science Museum and Symphony Hall and going to the Common, walking around. My whole family at different times lived and worked in Boston.

[1990] You know, when you choose to make your living as an actor, it's all fine and good to look at it as some kind of artistic endeavor. At its best, it is that. But the fact is, most of the actors out there don't earn $3 million a picture and can't afford to take two years off between films and look for the right thing. Most of us are tradesmen. Acting for me, is a passion, but it's also a job, and I've always approached it as such. I have a certain manual-laborist view of acting. There's no shame in taking a film because you need some money. No shame in taking a film because you have always wanted to visit China. I was thinking about this last night as I was driving home. I started to go back through the different films I've done, and the television movies I've done and I started to think about why I chose them at that time. And I realized, every single film I've ever done I've taken because of the money. Every single one. I'm not ashamed to say that.

[1990] I had real trouble, actually, for a long time, getting people to hire me. My anxiety used to manifest itself in strange ways. I'd go in to read for some innocent, vulnerable character, and the feedback would be, "Well, we met Jimmy... and he scared us.".

[1995] I'm not eager at all to present my life out there for public consumption. I like to do one or two films a year and then do what is absolutely obligatory in terms of promoting them. My life outside of films is vital to me.

[on doing Stargate (1994)] I didn't have a great knowledge of this genre. The only demand I was putting on the picture was that my paycheck came in and that I had fun making it. It seemed like it would be rather light-hearted. And it was. I'm not a big fan of films that take themselves seriously.

[on his role on Boston Legal (2004)] The most interesting heroes have a bit of villainy to them, and the most interesting villains have a certain bit of heroism to them, I think (Alan Shore) intends to do the right thing, but his view of the world is very different so, to get to the right place, he sometimes take a path through a very dark forest.

[on his menial jobs before acting] I drove a truck for a while for a meat packing plant. I shoveled manure at the Clarmont Riding Academy in New York. Mopped floors for a while. I uploaded railroad cars and trailers at a warehouse. I wasn't really qualified for anything else.

When you're a kid running around playing make-believe, everything is changing from moment to moment - and a television show is like that too. That's what I got into the business for! I like to know just enough to do the job.

I've always loved antiheroes. Those were the characters I was drawn to growing up, and if I'm equipped to play a hero at all, it's certainly an antihero!