Quotes

Almost every man I've ever met says to me, "Boy, did my wife make love to me that night, when she saw 'Dracula'.".

There are certain animals in the jungle that you watch, and I like to be one of those. There are other animals about whom you say: "Oh, was he in the play? I didn't notice." I want to be one of the animals you watch. Once I walk out there [on stage], it only matters that I viscerally and emotionally move you. That's my game. My job is to take you right to the edge of every emotion that is required by whatever the character has to do.

As you get older, you learn what you can endure. And I know that I just can't endure living in a trailer in Burbank anymore and saying things like "And what did forensics tell you?".

[on aging as an actor, and having] ...the horrible and frightening revelation that in order to be good at what you do, you have to go deeper and deeper with each part and have to eviscerate yourself in a way that the man in the audience would never dream of doing. It may be that I keep doing it because I'm afraid to die. It may be that simple fact. The idea of saying, "I did this, I won that, I didn't win that, and now I'll just stop." - that isn't me. I'm a worker. If I don't pit myself against things that are larger than myself, I'm lost.

[on his portrayal of Count Dracula on Broadway] I don't play him as a hair-raising ghoul. He is a nobleman, an elegant man with a difficult problem... a man with a unique and distinctive social problem: he has to have blood to live and he is immortal.

[on his role as Skeletor in Masters of the Universe (1987)] It's one of my favorite parts. I played him because my son was four years old and walked around with a sword yelling "I have the power!". And he loved, loved, loved Skeletor. I didn't even blink when I was offered the role. I couldn't wait to play him.