Tom Berenger's Quotes

I was kind of confused. I thought, Well, if I get drafted, I'll go. Everybody was very concerned with it. I had friends who went. Some that came back and some that didn't.

I wrote a script. I actually enjoyed writing it more than acting. It's about the Irish rebellion of 1920, which is a fascinating period and place for me.

Rough Riders took 13 weeks to shoot, plus a week of training. The same guy trained us trained the cast in Platoon. Except, instead of radios, we used bugles to signal.

Sometimes I think I'm real predictable to myself and other times... you always wonder, Is this really what I wanted to do? Did I make a mistake? Should I be doing something else?

There's a hysterical, tired sense of humor that comes after working 14 hours a day, six days a week. I like those things because they take the pressure off the constant stress.

These days, you can do a TV series for five years and all of a sudden be on top of the business. Features don't even run in theaters very long anymore before going right to television.

To people outside, they think, Gee, that's great. You get to go here and there. The other side of that is our expression, This is location, not vacation.

We had training camp for a week, and we used the actual military drills of that period. We didn't have to work out much after hours, because going up and down hills all day was a good workout in itself.

While I was doing these plays in the beginning, I wasn't getting paid. I thought of it more as a hobby. Then I realized how seriously a lot of these people took what they were doing.

Around mid-life everyone goes maniac a little bit.

Debra Winger doesn't let anything interfere with her performance, which is the way it should be.

Even my agents say, We don't know what this business is anymore.

I came in on the tail end of the old school of Hollywood.

I don't care about being a star. I can do a supporting role; I don't have to be a lead.

I got to talking to an old actor, and he had a bunch of stories about the Rough Riders.

I guess if I weren't an actor, I'd be a history professor.

I like playing flawed characters, people who aren't perfect.

I was so exhausted after fighting for the project for five years, shooting it was like the Bataan Death March.

I'm probably satisfied with my career 80 percent of the time.

I've done about six comedies. Oddly enough, the script came to me from one of the guys in Platoon.

In this industry, the new owners prefer to kill anything they weren't responsible for.

Most of what gets made now, you laugh your way through, go home and forget you've seen it.

My mother, sister and I watched through the windows as my father gambled.

Take characters that Nicholson or De Niro play: they're not always tough.

The Big Chill is one of those things that everybody can identify with. Between eight characters, they can pick somebody who's somewhat like them.

This is all new to me, these re-releases. I don't know how these things do. I don't know if it will be people who saw it originally or young people.