Actors From New York City

"As an immigrant first-generation family here in this country, it wasn't about safe choices, it was about realistic choices. There was a lot of weight put into the fact that I was one of the first in my extended family to attend college [a bachelor's from Brooklyn College, a master's in fine arts from Cornell) and what that meant — what this country has to offer."

"As an artist I want to try to be as versatile as possible. I’ve had the good fortune to play characters that have a role-model thing to them. But I would think now, after 25 years, 30, that the body of work does say something about where I’m coming from. So now it’s not so much about role models. Although this character does have a nihilistic approach to life and he’s very complicated and flawed, that’s a meal for an actor."

"Brooklyn born, Bronx bred… I felt like the dreamer/day tripper of the neighborhood with a vivid imagination and a longing to transcend the mundane through my love of the arts. My mother inspired me a lot. I can remember growing up hearing her voice in the background on the phone urging others to stop putting up with abuse and to stand up for themselves in order to better their lot in life. She was always helping people – mostly other women – liberate themselves from oppressive relationships whether it was at home or work."

"I lead a very interesting life. Every day there is something very different, enticing, and exciting that happens to me or around me. I am into acting and directing for the stage and screen, and all human triumph and failure, our planet Earth, long distance open ocean sailing, ecology, hydrology, astrophysics, geology, botany, and history. Part of my lifestyle you should all remember is having fun. Being funny is a big part of it. After all, if one is in tune, funny is the tune to play. Giving laughter is more fun than giving advice. Giving laughter while giving advice is the jackpot."

"I believe that one is only truly free when learning, and one can only learn when one is free."

"Che’s outside perspective jokes are always at least designed to toss obstacles in the way of conventional wisdom, so him telling Americans excited about Stone’s arrest to calm down because Trump is “one tweet away from declaring a state of emergency and bringing back slavery” had punching power. Him noting how reports of “the White House” denying Trump’s involvement with the increasingly obvious conspiracy to conspire with Russia to gain said address is akin to Che claiming “I’m innocent, just ask my apartment” is a fine joke, too. Plus, seeding in the detail that Roger Stone once got fired from the Bob Dole presidential campaign for putting out swingers ads for black men to have sex with his wife into a setup about Roger Stone doing that was a crisp little reminder that the Trump administration remains beyond the reach of hyperbolical satire."

"I googled this guy, Roger Stone, because he looks like he pays black guys to bang his wife, And I found out in 1996 he was forced to resign from Bob Dole’s campaign for asking black guys to bang his wife. Not kidding! Look it up!"

"I got turned down for a role on UPN and I was really, really down… now how sad is that to be depressed for not getting a role on UPN?"

"In early 1981 one of the most important moments in my life occurred. I entered a vivisection lab … In one of the cages, I saw a young Alaskan malamute … The dog tried to lick my face through the bars. Maybe he thought I had come to save him. I saw the infected stitches in the belly, oozing pus and blood. I saw the filthy, encrusted tube that was draining fluid out of his stomach. And as I held him, I saw the rotted stitches start to come apart and his guts start to spill out. As gently as I could, I let him down onto the floor of the cage and placed my hand on him, trying to comfort him in those last few moments of his life. I was still holding him when at last he took his final struggling breaths and died. It seemed to take a lifetime. I was close to tears as I looked at the body, and I thought, this isn’t science — this is madness. Standing there, looking at that gentle animal lying dead in a bloody cage, I made a promise to him and to myself, that I would never forget him, that I would keep on fighting vivisection until it was ended."

"I decided to become Vegan simply because if you care about animals and people, there is no other choice but to be vegan. It’s a very simple equation — meat and dairy = animal and human suffering. … When you know the truth about meat and dairy the hard thing would be to continue to eat them."

"We are highly evolved, intelligent human beings. And we do have the choice of what we put in our mouths. And for me anyway, it’s no meat. … Being vegetarian now, I find myself feeling so much lighter and freer and fresher, and I can sleep less and do more. I hear this from so many people who are vegetarians and vegans. I started feeling much lighter. My activities were energized. My thoughts were clearer. … Finding inner peace is vital. If you don’t have inner peace, you are not living. Everyone has their own personal journey. My journey for finding inner peace has been since the day that I was born. My children have taught me a lot about inner peace. I’d say more patience than peace, but through patience you find peace!"

"I love animals deeply… They are my friends. Animals have a great sense of community, friendship, not to mention strong family bonds, paternal and maternal instincts. Especially in America, the farming and slaughtering of tens of millions of animals in cruel and barbaric ways is offensive and unfathomable. Many animals are sick and diseased when led to slaughter, giving the ultimate sacrifice for our hungry pleasures. They have been separated and disconnected from their family members, and grieve the great loss of those close to them."

"I consider myself very sentimental, very sensitive, but obviously my outward appearance is a bit scruffy-haired, and I have a general tendency toward snarling at people, and a sort of misanthropic nature. Maybe that is what people actually read. I do actually believe that misanthropy and sensitivity go hand in hand, because I have a tremendous disappointment in the ways of the world."

"I love filmmaking when fate is a part of the process and you are dependent on the laws of physics and the elements to get a single moment that transports or in some way creates an illusion even for a moment. I think that is tremendous fun and what I think filmmaking is, catching lightning in a bottle. I feel like we are so used to CGI now and thank god because it is a wonderful tool, but there is an element of everything you are looking at has been created in the comfort of a studio. I want to return to a world where I can celebrate when you are really interacting with the world."

"I really love seeing things go sour, because that’s the way dread creeps into life. A lot of horror films start with a great shock scene. I grew up on that model and it’s great fun, but very perversely, I’m interested in setting up something else, where you’re really engaged with the humanity of the characters — you could be in a normal drama with its own set of problems — and then something else develops. I like this philosophical question: what comes first, reality or your interpretation of it? However interesting that is, and whether it fits in with the horror genre, I don’t know, but I think it makes perfect sense."

"I credit my plant-based diet with giving me the energy and stamina to help carry my teams to four NBA championship wins. … Veganism has become a transformative part of my life and I have made it my mission to share the power of plant-based eating with the world. … Vegan eating is not just a slam dunk for human health; it’s also the most effective way to combat climate change, according to a 2010 report by the United Nations. … going vegan is one of the best things a person can do for their health, for animals, and for the environment."

"Robert Parish and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are the two reasons I became a vegetarian fully in the first place. They where the first ones I saw and I was 27 at the time and there was an article about Robert Parish and one of his martial art forms and I remember playing against this guy and asking him how he was running up and down the court with me and I was in my twenties. He said, "you have to learn to pace yourself young fella". … Then I would go, "well then your car has no gas" and I thought about that. So at 27 I made the change. … I had a good career but Robert Parish had a view to look at stats and a better career. If I would have known how to take care of my body … then I would have played until I was 40 as well."

"What's interesting is that you can have a set that's very calm, very smooth, very cooperative...and end up with a terrible movie. And you can have a set that's really horrible as far as relationships and volatility, and come up with a great movie. Sometimes that energy gets infused into what ends up on film -- it's interesting in that way."

"You learn a lot watching that, because so much of what you do in film and television is technical. You could go to acting class until you're blue in the face, but when it really comes down to it, you'd better have that acting training where so much of what you do is actually technical."

"So much of acting is technical. Actually, I don’t want people to think that acting is technical, that you don’t need to have a rich fountain of emotional life and all those kinds of things, and know how to focus and concentrate and have good imagination and all of the other things that really make up an actor. One of the things they teach you, for example, in acting class is respond to your instinct, to your moment-to-moment instincts. If they just did that, they’d never get the shot, you know? Because you’d be walking all over… You’d be doing it differently every time. And the camera guys and the light guys, they need to know what you’re going to do. That’s what I mean by, if you just followed your instinct, or follow your impulses, which is what they say to you in acting class, you have to do that but you have to do it in a very confined window."

"I understand that people refer to me as an icon and that sort of thing because there are certain guys who play a certain role. And horror fans are very passionate people. They love their genre. And they love the Saw films. So the fact that I played a central role in those films, that puts you in a position where people... You know, the screen is sixty feet across, and people sometimes forget that you’re an actor and you play... Because you become established as a certain kind of character. But in fact, we continue to try and occupy the skins of different human beings. That’s what you get involved in being an actor for in the first place."

"My mantra is “stay perpendicular.” Horizontal is not as good. Half the people that came along and up with with me are either gone to another dimension or don’t remember what they had for lunch. I’m fortunate. I don’t know why. I just want to have a good time."

"Doubt is an important part of the human being. Trust has to be attained. If you don’t trust yourself, you won’t trust others. You make a choice and see where it goes."

"I have done some films along the way that have been screwed up and not as good as they read. Some films that are not that good on the page turn into good movies. So I’m fallible is what I’m saying. It’s OK to be wrong. You learn from your wrongs. You don’t learn from being right. If you’re right, you already know it. If you’re wrong, it’s because you don’t know about it, and you made a mistake."

"When I was a boy, while watching the funeral procession of the Great Martin Luther King Jr. on NBC, I observed a rickety wooden cart being pulled by two mules and behind the cart, a sea of people. In the cart lay the body of MLK; at that moment, he represented the totality of the human struggle. I remember feeling then, while watching the procession on TV, that we, as a country, were either going to pull together or else come apart."

"The left in Hollywood are quick to flaunt their political allegiances; this provides them the ability to both grow in number and maintain their level of influence. Meanwhile, the right in Hollywood, for the most part, hide in the shadows and cower. When they do make their views known, conservatives are minimized and their careers are attacked as irrelevant, or as “not A-list enough.”"

"I'm not the kind of actor to worry. Certain actors can't translate to the big screen, so I'm glad I can do both. If 60% of an audience know your name, a lot more will know your face. I have a name which has a certain level of recognition now, which also means producers and directors know me, and are able to recognise the range of things that I can do."

"In the 8th Grade I found I had a voice for opera, so I followed that path a little, but my impulse has always been an actor, I have always liked cinema, and let's face it, opera singers are just bad actors! I didn't want to translate myself in that direction. My heroes were people like Spencer Tracy, Bogart, Robert Mitchum, Marvin, Richardson, Caine, all those sort."

"I’m not particularly fond of watching myself act. I think because my roots are in the stage that the joy for me is the act of doing it. The joy for me is not sitting down and watching me do it. I’m so critical of myself. I’d sit and watch myself in a scene, maybe one in which I’m just in the background, and think, “What are you doing back there, Rene? Why are you doing that? Why didn’t you just stand still? Shut up. What’s the matter with you?”"

"I hadn't seen the previous two Creature films but I was aware of them. My Universal contract was still in effect and there wasn't another film property that they could use me in at the time. It wasn't a bad script and I made the most of it. Leigh Snowden, I thought, was a beautiful ingénue. I remember there were both Ricou Browning and Don Megowen as the Creature, in and out of the water. I thought the Creature costume, both before and after the burning incident, was convincing. There was a scene that takes place on a balcony where I was being pursued by the Creature. He picks me up to toss me over. In the final cut a dummy goes over, yet for a moment before the director yelled "Cut!" I thought I was going over for real."

"Don't call it a comeback I've been here for years."

"I have no friends."

"Damn, was it my fault, somethin' I did/ to make a father leave his first kid at 7 doin' my first bid?"

"[W]e all thought you loved yourself, but that couldn't have been the issue. Or maybe they're just saying that now, because they miss you. Shoot, a fella tried to doss you? That's why you're laying on your back, looking at the roof of the church. Preacher's telling the truth and it hurts."

"He just talks about eating too much... I don't like anything about Drake. I don’t like his awful voice. I don’t like what he talks about. I don’t like his face. I don’t like the way he walks. Like, nothing. I don’t like his haircut."

"I'd be jealous of the Backstreet Boys when they sold more than me... Going back to Backstreet. They made their label huge and brought them in shot loads of money and now they can't record, I heard, because their label is turning them around. I feel them. They're real hip hoppers in their own way, but their management "team" refuses to recognize that shot. I feel those men or boys or whatever you wanna call them. We give our souls to our music. We put our lives on the wax and the labels treat us like shot."

"It just shows what I've said. awful piece of shot. Like, sometimes you didn't even know this woman. You didn't even know her. You were in middle school. Before, I just spoke on what I didn't like about him. I didn't know him so I couldn't say 'I didn't like him. I didn’t like this.' But now it's like, 'you awful piece of shot. You piece of shot. Who are you to write…to…to…I mean. Allow her music to live on and not include people she's always worked with? Not include her recipe? That’s like saying, 'you know what? I'm going to make KFC but I'm not using the colonel's recipe!' That isn't KFC, fella! That’s YOUR FC. Your Buckskin chicken. [laughs] That’s some bullish and it isn't the same shot. No let's talk about this a little longer. That’s some bullish. That’s some really bullish! Take this! Take that! I don't give a heck! What, fella?! It is what it is man! It's wrong. Honor her legacy. Honor what she did. You have no right to make it yours! If you're going to allow her to live on, do it in a manner that honors what she did. That's all you can do! Respectfully. Rightfully. 'Oh I'm going to make this and re-' Who are you?! Who are you to change..?!"

"Had it? Should've shot it! Now, you're dearly departed."

"I am going to beat the living fuck out him...I am breaking every rule in boxing to make sure I fuck him right up [...] Once I am done with him, I am going to whip my dick out and piss on him...right in his muthafuckin face."

"Give a dog a bone, leave a dog alone. Let a dog roam and he'll find his way home."

"I had the taste of the alcohol since I was 11 … It allowed me to be clever, charming and to behave outrageously. Acting also allowed me not to be me. So I could indulge every fantasy in this paradise of America."

"Cute in Ireland meant cunning and devious … And I'm not sure that I'm not."

"I left school at age 13. I was illiterate with no role models. The great psychobabble today is the dysfunctional family. Well, I've never met one that was functional. In Limerick, a family that was dysfunctional was one who could afford to drink but didn't."

"On his brother Frank: He's an amazing man … When he was 12, one of our schoolmasters said: "My boy, you are a literary genius. My strong suggestion is to go to America. They will appreciate you there." Over the years I've read what he's written that never got published, and I always said it still holds. He is a literary genius. Also the most nonjudgmental decent guy. He forgives."

"People say, "get us out of the UN, we don't need the UN", we invented the UN. This is us, we are the ones who founded the idea of nations working together, and I think that's something we need to do. And it's, it's messy, and it's really complicated, and there's going to be a lot of countries out there that expect us to clean up there mess, or just want to see us fall on (our) face. And they love that, which is what I think president Obama said brilliantly at the UN, when he basically said, "that ok". If I'm paraphrasing, I don't think he's ever said "ok" in his life, he's probably said "well". But basically he said, "look, for the last eight years you've been on our case about going it alone, you know, we're imperialists, we're hegemonic, we're going it alone, we're going it alone... Ok, we're not going it alone anymore, we're going to listen to you, but you better ante up and kick in. Because, you don't have the right to have an opinion, if you can't back it up. It's put up or shut up time". And I was so happy when he said that, and the way he handled the Latin (American) countries, when he was dealing with the crisis in Central America, the coups in Honduras. And he said, "the very same countries who accuse us of doing nothing, are also the same ones who accuse us of being imperialistic. You can't have it both ways.""

"Well alright, anyone who has dreams of world empire, look what it did to Britain. There's a reason that whole country is one big Smith song. That's actually one exciting thing about studying history, there did come a point towards the end of the 19th century where the British were just like, "this ain't worth it mate". There's a reason why in 1945 they gave us the keys to the world. They were like, "here, it's yours, take it, go, we're fine, no? India, go. Africa, go." Because they'd had enough. Because it's really hard, we can't even run ourselves. We literally have people storming our capital with signs saying , "government, keep your hands off my social security". If we can't handle that, do we really want to try and run, Africa? I think what we need is not so much world empire, I think we need closer cooperation, closer alliances."

"Do you know how many times, when I was a kid, going to Europe, having a Frenchman try to get on my case about Vietnam. And that wasn't the problem, do you know what it was like to have other kids, other American students go, "yeah, it's pretty bad, in Vietnam, we should, yeah". And I'd be like, 'but, mhmm, French Indochina.' , and they'd be like, "Oh is that near Vietnam" (groans). We don't educate our young people, and then we send them out into the world, as ambassadors as lameness. So no, no world empire, I don't want to be responsible for the plumbing in Rwanda, but we do need to become as much of a student of them as they are of us. Because, here's the thing. Well, the problem with the global village, remember in the early 90's, with the term now, global village, well the problem with the global village is that a lot of people are waking up realizing that they are in the global villages ghetto. And now with media, we are broadcasting these images of our wealth, and our power, our society, and the people in the global village are looking up on the hill seeing that mansion, but we're not looking down into the slum, and we need to do that. There's just so many times you can drive slowly through the ghetto in a rich convertible before you get carjacked. So this is what I mean, we need to engage..."

"There's a little pond, in a small town in Poland, where they used to dump the ashes. The pond is still gray, even half a century later. I've heard it said that the holocaust had no survivors, that even those who managed to remain technically alive were so irreparably damaged, that their spirit, their soul, the person that they were supposed to be, was gone forever. I'd like to think that's not true. But if it is, then no one on Earth survived this war."

"You wanna know who lost World War Z? Whales. I guess they never really had a chance, not with several million hungry boat people and half the world's navies converted to fishing fleets. [...] So the next time someone tries to tell you about how the true losses of this war are "our innocence" or "part of our humanity"... Whatever, bro. Tell it to the whales."

"If there's four Vietcong in a village with knives and punji sticks, we'll bring in a B-52. And I think, sometimes we need to learn to fight smarter instead of to fight richer. And this is what I mean, you know, education, "oh, education's expensive;" no it's not, books are cheap, (the) internet's cheap, we can fight smarter, we can learn. So, that's where resource-to-kill-ratio comes from."