Quotes

In most ways it was a damn good picture. But if we remade Midnight Cowboy (1969) today, the whole relationship between Buck and Ratso would have to be sexualized or at least made, you know, like in love... to be sexually or erotically honest.

If Washington is a two-party town, why can't Hollywood be one too?

[on Barack Obama] He's really extreme, but he's always trying to say something to cover it. He's like a Leftist from the Sixties. I was on the Left, that's why I know who he is. He says he'll talk to everybody like Hamas and Iran, but it's simple-minded candy he's throwing to the extreme left wing. He'd be the biggest disaster for Israel - and all democracies - that I can think of.

This is a perilous time, and more than ever, the world needs a united and strong America. If, God forbid, we live to see Mr. Obama president, we will live through a socialist era that America has not seen before, and our country will be weakened in every way.

I was caught up in the hysteria during the Vietnam era, which was brought about through Marxist propaganda underlying the so-called peace movement. The radicals of that era were successful in giving the communists power to bring forth the killing fields and slaughter 2.5 million people in Cambodia and South Vietnam. Did they stop the war, or did they bring the war to those innocent people? In the end, they turned their backs on all the horror and suffering they helped create and walked away.. the left have blood on their hands and I do too.

It seems to me that if Mr. Obama wins the presidential election, then Messrs. Farrakhan, Wright, Ayers and Pfleger will gain power for their need to demoralize this country and help create a socialist America.

[on media comparisons between Megan Fox and his daughter Angelina Jolie] They're both very beautiful and they're both kind of sexy girls. Maybe Megan will start doing the things that Angie is so well known for. Angie is known for helping with kids and for her concern for others. I think that would be wonderful for all of the kids if Megan were to do the same.

[on Burt Reynolds] He's sensitive. He hides that from the public. People do that all the time. Actors do that. Burt is very sensitive. He puts on a strong face. That's all part of his macho reputation. He's not a whiner.

I went to Russia in 1991, right in the middle of glasnost.It was an amazing experience, to see what socialism and communism does to people. People have no enthusiasm. Guys in hotels would not look up, they would not look at you. Once you see that, you can't forget it. I don't want people to have the feeling of hopelessness I witnessed there, when you're working for the government and you don't have the freedom to do the things that you love.

I was raised Catholic - I fell in love with certain ideals. The idea of right and wrong, being righteous, acknowledging when you make a mistake, repentance - all these important things I got from my Catholic background.

I'm interested in knowing about the truth and acting on it. That's it.

[on turning down Superman (1978)] I was being completely miscast. I'm thin, I have a broken nose, I am not classically good-looking. I mean, if you put me next to this new Superman, this Henry Cavill, you would laugh, and ask: "What's that skinny guy doing next to Superman?"

If people disagree with me, that's no big deal to me, except that it is a very important disagreement.

I made a lot of mistakes as a young father. I made a lot of mistakes as a young man. I paid dearly, and my children paid dearly.

And now I hear Obama trying to convince the American people that if we give up our nuclear weapons, this will set a fine example and all other countries will follow suit. What a dangerous and naive notion that is. If President Reagan wasn't such a powerful force of strength, we never would have seen Premier Gorbachev take down the Berlin Wall.

I met Marcheline. We had our ups and downs. I finally said, "Let's get married." I don't know how I made that decision. I wasn't as stable as I should have been at that time. I got off and made mistakes. The marriage dissolved and I have regrets... When people say they are going to get divorced, I say, "Don't do it. You had love between you and you can find that again. You must do it for the kids because a divorce is a terrible scar." I didn't know that then.

We were traumatized in the Sixties and all of that behavior-the dancing in circles, the smoking pot and saying "all we need is love"-it was because we couldn't identify evil; we couldn't believe in evil-we didn't want to believe in evil so we just hid from it. It was a very disturbing time. Some of it-let everybody do their thing and all that stuff-was OK in terms of getting to the truth of things and that was a nice energy. But, really, overwhelmingly, it was a very bizarre, selfish and hedonistic philosophy that wasn't very helpful. It attacked the family-the attack on the family was very severe because not only was there this idea of indiscriminate love and that would solve the world's problems, which gave rise to teen pregnancy, but also this idea not to trust anyone over 30. This was from people who were over 30 and bombed out of their minds with every kind of drug they could put into their system. Then there was the romanticization of the drugs-there were people coming out with pseudo scientific evidence that drugs increase your enlightenment-it was devastating. Today, I find that people look back at that time in a romantic way and that's as dangerous as anything is. It wasn't a romantic time. It was a time of great distortion.

[President Obama] wants to legalize all the illegal Mexicans, and every other illegal immigrant from other countries as well. Why? For their vote, for the 2016 election, for the Democrats. It will make no difference on the billions of dollars it will cost the American tax payers.

Initially, when they said, "Would you come and do something on 'Seinfeld,'" I said, "Well, there's a very good team of actors. That's a good ensemble, sure. Sure, I'd do something for you guys. I thought it was just a walk-on and that would be it. But then I read the script and my name was all over the script. It was quite shocking, but fun. It was a big compliment, so I was delighted with it and very honored by it actually.

[of Deliverance (1972)] It was made after the Vietnam War, and something happened in the '60s. It was an attack on manhood, in a certain way. And that was a part of it. It had depth in that time. People didn't know it; I'm sure that you could talk to a thousand people and not one of them would come up with it. But I went through that time and I went through those questions about myself, when people were going off to war, and I didn't want to go off to war. I joined the Reserves because I didn't want to go fight, but if my number was gonna come up, I was gonna go fight, and I would have been very complicated about that, you know, psychically. And yet other guys were fighting and dying for the freedom of another group of people across the world. It was an amazing thing. Part of the anti-war movement was on some principle, and a whole bunch of it was cowardice. So what was the American male at that time? I think there was an underlying theme of that in the picture, when a guy has to go up and kill somebody who's threatening to kill him and his buddy.

[on Deliverance (1972)] We shot some of the movie in one take. We didn't shoot a lot of extra footage. I had one moment where I didn't think I could maneuver the canoe. We were on the rapids and we couldn't hesitate. And I told director John Boorman this and he said, "Give me the damn oar!" He had less training that we had, and he jumped in and grabbed the oar, went down the river, went over the thing and under the thing, and turned around, came back to us and said, "Do it!" After that, everybody did it.

[on Deliverance (1972)] What is heroism? How do you confront evil? I feel that that's part of the movie's resonance.

I'm a character actor, and I've always been a character actor.