Quotes

Even though my G.P.A. was near perfect in college, they denied me admission to this exclusive graduate school in the Sciences at U.C. Berkeley. But, it turned out they did me a favor. At that point, I decided I'd dedicate my life to art, to acting. Life's been the wildest adventure you could imagine ever since.

I often think to myself, I'm wasting my life... doing this acting thing. I should be out there saving animals or fighting to save our environment... two things I've been passionate about all my life. But here I am... immersed in this outrageously successful acting career... fiddling while Rome burns.

Cine 7...my neighborhood movie theater in Oakland during the late 60's and 70's...It was the Roman Colosseum for movie watching during a turbulent time in American history. Every night a movie played, it was like a rock concert, a super bowl, and the best party you've ever been to all rolled into one. As a young kid, I hung out at that crazy place as much as I could and took note through the clouds of pot smoke of the booze, the sex in the seats, the cat calls, and the firecrackers and flaming cigarettes that made their way toward the screen when the movie got slow, on and on. Movies were an event like no other at Cine 7 and while those days and the theater are long gone, I try to keep the spirit of that place alive in the way I play my characters and the way I live my life.

I'm old-school, you know, old-fashioned in the way I am in the world and the way I'd like to see the world be. Always have been. At the same time, the madness I see in the world gives me endless amounts of delicious inspiration to play the offbeat characters I do.

Hollywood. I've worked a few days in this town. And I've noticed the Walk of Fame and all that, but the real heroes around here are the rank and file who just keep showing up, on both sides of the camera, their names on unmarked slabs up and down the boulevard.

I always thought I'd accomplish something special in life... and I'm just gonna keep on thinking that way til I'm 6 feet under.

I've watched a lot of hopeful people in this business, good friends of mine, get kicked to the curb and left in the dust, but I'm still standing, drunk on hope and making movies.

[on losing his buddy Theo to cancer] I'd watched about three foreign films in my entire life, the Westerns by Leone, but Theo being Dutch watched European flicks all the time so I watched those darn things with him and had my eyes opened. We'd talk for hours about those movies and about life, and I've never looked at either the same since.

[on becoming an actor] I worked all these jobs to pay for every single day I went to college, thinking at the end I'd be OK spending my life in a cubicle, a big-shot businessman, but I've got to have thunder and lightning in my life and this crazy career in acting is all that.