The more you are known, the more difficult it is to hide behind characters.

The most fun you can possibly have as an actor is to walk that line between what's real and what's interesting.

The Whole Wide World is the first movie I've ever produced.

Then I did Mystic Pizza, just to do something I wasn't fat in.

They were all interested in what I was going to do, because I'd never worked in televsion before.

This haunting idea of becoming a celebrity doesn't settle well with me at all.

Unless you look like Brad Pitt, it's really hard to have full control of your character.

What kind of recognition do I deserve? I don't deserve any recognition.

When I was younger I used to pick things just to face the fear.

When you are a character actor they trust you will go in and give them a full character and leave.

Acting is not a mystery. There's nothing that I know that other actors don't know. We all act, we're all actors, we all know the same thing. The only thing that separates us is experience.

All of us are trying to achieve 100 percent in our work. That's all we struggle to do. We never do, but we never stop trying until the day we die. It's that struggle to achieve 100 percent, that's where our performance lies, that's what the audience gets. They get the struggle.

And then, as the years went on, I just kept moving along, busting into doors and getting roles, until I started to actually believe that what these other people were saying was true.

I'm a character actor, and I made a choice when I was young, after 'Mystic Pizza', not to go for the mainstream stuff, and to do a more eclectic kind of route.

My partner Dan Ireland wants me to direct, and I read a lot of scripts - some good enough that I could see myself. But then it's like, so what? Who cares? Let someone else direct it.

People who are extremely inside their head, like he was, are caught in a neurosis that goes round and round. Then something will hook them and take them to their end and they can't control it.

The only thing I do worry about is that the more films I do the more visible I am going to become as a personality because of press and because of the sheer quantity of films.

When you're a child you're able to assimilate so easily into any situation. You even start talking like the people you're around. I wasn't conscious that I was so good at that until I started to truly feel like an actor.

With Altman, he does discuss everything with you, but then leaves you to it and gives you full rein and lets you improvise and create a character while the camera is rolling.

It's pretty simple, pretty obvious: that people's first impressions of people are really a big mistake.