Jamie Foxx does a good rendition of me. It's a real gift, mimicry of that kind, the tonal thing. It's sort of like having a talent for playing an instrument.
I'm much more a European Italian than I am an American Italian, and I've always felt that that style of acting comedy is in me. I put comedy as much as I can into all my movies, if I can help it.
I destroy the painting as soon as I can see what it is. When I can make out something in it, I destroy it because it's no longer coming from my unconscious.
I always had this thing, when I was younger especially, I didn't want to do movies that much. I found they took a lot out of you and they were exhausting for me in a lot of ways.
There is only one way of surviving all the early heartbreaks in this business. You must have a sense of humor. And I think it also helps if you are a dreamer. I had my dreams all right. And that is something no one can ever take away. They cost nothing, and they can be as real as you like to make them. You own your dreams and they are priceless. I've been a lavatory attendant, a theatre usher, a panhandler, all for real. Now, as an actor, I can be a journalist today and a brain surgeon tomorrow. That's the stuff my dreams are made of.
It used to worry me what people said about me. I'm learning not to worry as much. Sometimes you feel critics are wrong all the time, but I don 't take objection to it, because that's the way it goes. They can be wrong, they can be right. They can be cruel, they can be kind.
"To be or not to be is" [by William Shakespeare] beyond anything I can comprehend. I understand it on a superficial level, but the depth of it just boggles my mind. I think it's probably the greatest of all speeches ever written.
The physical stamina [in Revolution]. I was just shocked by it. I didn't think I had it in me ever, and I wasn't terribly young when I did it. I was in my early forties. That was the first thing I was struck by, not by the acting, not by anything else, but by the physicality.
When I was younger, there was the sex thing. That's par for the course.When you're a movie star, it went with it. It's a kind of rite of passage, socially.
Everything changes with age. The parts change with age, your feelings about them change, roles that I would've wanted to play 10 years ago, I don't want to play now.