I've heard people say you have to love the characters you play. I don't feel that way. I've played a lot of people that I don't love at all. What's important to me is to try to make them real. Show less «

I really believe that all of us have a lot of darkness in our souls. Anger, rage, fear, sadness. I don't think that's only reserved for people who have horrible upbringings. Show less «

I think of being an actor as kind of a young man's gig. It's emasculating, in a way, people messing with you and putting make-up on you and telling you when to wake up and when to go to sleep, holding your hand to cross the street. I can do it up to a certain point and then I start to feel like a puppet. Show less «

[1996, Movieline Magazine] I've been blessed to have an acting career, and I'm eternally grateful, but the real secret obsession I had was to get up and play rock and roll. When I was a kid, my heroes weren't actors. I never went to the movies, or hardly ever, and if I did it would be maybe something where I could catch a glimpse of titties or a horror movie. To this day, if I meet an actor, it's really not that big a deal for me. But if I met Wilson Pickett. I'd shit in my pants. But, believe me, I'm not gonna give up my day job. Show less «

[on The Woodsman (2004)] There's nothing I won't play. I won't draw the line at anything. Worrying about image is for celebrities, not actors. My concerns were more about not getting paid and whether we could make a compelling movie that people would go and see. I also knew it was gonna be a tough one to make, that it was really gonna suck. I had to go to a dark place. Show less «

[on playing tycoon Sebastian Shaw in X: First Class (2011)]: I haven't been this guy before. He's a little bit Ted Turner, a little bit Hugh Hefner, a little bit Donald Trump. That's how I see him. I wasn't interested in him as scary evil. It was more about control. His power is a metaphor for who he is. He can be different things to different people and he also takes whatever energy you have and throws it back at you. Show less «

You can sit around and complain that Hollywood doesn't make any good movies. But you can generate your own material. So I read books. I come up with ideas. I was the producer on The Woodsman (2004) to help get that off the ground. Sometimes that extends itself to directing. Show less «

I think of myself more as a workhorse actor. It will be hot and cold and up and down, but no one will kick me out of the business. Show less «

I don't look like I used to. Here's the thing: The greatest justice in life is that your vision and your looks tend to go simultaneously. Show less «

[on his role in A Few Good Men (1992)] When Rob (Reiner) called, I believe both my part and Kiefer's part were uncast, so of course I thought, I want to be the bad guy. And Kyra was like, 'Come on, this is a good character - he's the antagonist, but he's doing it for the right reasons. He's not a bad guy.' She was right. Tom and I spent a lot of time drilling those quick [dialogue exchanges] so that we would have that way of talking down. I spent time at Quantico. The Marines really wanted me to show them in a good light because I was the one good Marine in the movie, you know? So they were constantly adjusting my uniform. Show less «

[on preparing for his role in Apollo 13 (1995)] Ron (Howard) called me up and said, "we're going up on this zero-G airplane and we, uh - for research. You don't have to go. You don't have to go. Absolutely no pressure. If you don't want to go, you don't have to go. Tom's gonna go. Gary's gonna go. Bill's gonna go. I'm gonna go." You know, everybody was going to go, so of course I'm not going to look like an idiot, you know, I mean I... there is a certain element of my personality that is *slightly* male. Show less «

I want to see the numbers that prove that show-business marriages are any less successful than other marriages. It's just very public when they fail. Show less «

[1996, on if he considers himself to be vain] Yeah, uh-huh, definitely. Absolutely. Actors are by nature vain people. Aside from looking good, vanity is about wanting to be watched, wanting to be seen. Actors who deny that are totally full of it. I think that's really fundamentally what drives them into being actors. Now, that said, in my own work I'm not afraid to be ugly. I only want to look good if I think it's part of who the character is, or part of the story we want to tell. In The River Wild (1994), for instance, my character's not a nice guy, but he should look good. Because you have to sort of be seeing him through the Meryl Streep character's eyes. He's a prick, but he should look good, because you had to know what drew Meryl to him. In Sleepers, no, the guy did not need to look good. And Barry (Levinson) made sure that the camera angles were unflattering. Show less «

[on filming Murder in the First (1995)] One of the hardest things I've ever done, emotionally and physically. Lost a bunch of weight, was covered in bugs and rats and filth every day, was naked for a lot of it. And we lived through the Northridge quake, one of the worst in California history. I'd be shackled and naked and then [feel] these tremors. It put me in a very dark place. I was a little bit nuts. The only chance in hell this movie had was for some kind of Oscar consideration, so I begged Warner Bros. to put it out on one screen before the end of the year. They released the movie in January. I got screwed. Show less «

[on Quicksilver (1986)] Not a good movie.

[on landing Animal House (1978)] They cast me straight out of acting school. I went for this goofy audition for this movie, and then I forgot all about it. I'm living in this two-room shit-hole with another guy in a welfare hotel at 85th and Broadway. Then, months later, they called me up and said they wanted me to do some movie for scale. Honestly, I not only didn't know how much scale was, I didn't know what the fuck it was. At that point, I think it was, like, $785 a week. Man, when I found that out it was incredible! But they needed me out there the day after tomorrow. I had to get on a plane the next day. So I was flown first class to San Francisco, stayed in a hotel overnight...Man, I was in seventh fucking heaven. I'd been on a couple of flights before, but I'd never flown first class. I couldn't believe you didn't have to pay for a beer in first class, couldn't believe it. I take out my script and start reading it, hoping the stewardesses will notice. Show less «

[on She's Having a Baby (1988)] One of my favorite movies I've ever done. I think it got the short end of the stick. It was very painful for me that it got such a critical bashing. Nobody went to see it. Show less «

[on L.A.] That's where the industry is. There is a tremendous amount of business you can do just by walking through restaurants and just being there. Show less «

[on Sleepers (1996)) He (Barry Levinson) tracked me down in Canada when I was making Losing Chase, and sent me a note which said, 'I think you could put an interesting spin on this character.' For an actor, that's like the greatest thing you can hear from a director. There's a difference between saying that and saying. 'Hey, I've got this part, I think I can show you how to play it,' or 'Hey, I've got this part, you're just like this guy,' whatever the fuck that means. But when a director says, 'I want to see what it is that you're going to bring to the table,' that's the best possible work environment. Barry creates an environment that makes you want to explore. When I took Sleepers, I thought to myself, this is going to be a really heavy, horrible experience, because I gotta do all this bad stuff to little boys. It's the story of four friends from Hell's Kitchen who get sent to a juvenile home, and I play the guy who tortures and abuses them. He's the head baddie. A sadist, a pedophile, an extremely bad person...I kind of pride myself on trying to discover some kind of humanity in the darkest of characters, and I think usually I'm pretty successful. I don't know if I was in this case. I mean, I didn't play him with drool coming down his chin; I tried to play him real, but he's pretty dark. The funny part was that I thought I'd have to stay away from the kids between takes, to stay in character and not relate to them in a very human way. That's not the way it turned out at all. It was one of the best times I ever had making a movie. It was a gas to be with these kids. We'd sit around and carry on, tell jokes and stories, and then the camera would roll and-boom!-I'd be beating them and doing all these things to them. Very strange. Show less «

[1992 quote] I want to do movies that I think people are gonna see, for a change. I'm tired of doing things that only one person will tell me they've seen. If I want that, I'll do a play. I've done my turn in the independent market. After I was a big movie star, I went back to independent films because I really believe in them. But I'm fucking sick of it. I want big, mainstream movies. Quality, yes, but big, mainstream movies that people are gonna see. Show less «

[on playing a pedophile in The Woodsman (2004)] I don't have people who would advise me against this based on some sort of "image". At some point you have to decide if you're going to be a personality or you're going to be an actor. If playing this kind of a role could have a negative effect on my public personality, I don't care. I'll play anything, if I think there's something compelling, or there's a director I'm dying to work with, or a part I hadn't done before or a co-star I think is great. Show less «

Most actors want to have the world look at us and love us, and those who say that that's not really a driving force for them, I don't believe. Show less «

[on keeping a successful marriage] Keep your fights clean and your sex dirty.

[on filming Murder in the First (1995) during the 1994 Northridge earthquake] It was one of the spookiest jobs I've ever had, but Alcatraz was not the problem. Most of the film was done in L.A. I'm in this four-by-six cell--wet, naked, covered in shit, live bugs in my hair, live rats chewing on my leg, chained to the walls for a lot of it. Being beaten by Gary Oldman; of course, I can't think of anyone I would rather be beaten by. One day, it was four-thirty on a Monday morning, we'd been working all night, and the ground started shaking. We were right near the epicenter. It was a horrible experience. Here I was, naked, shackled in this cell, and just every day playing some new level of agony. It was the closest I'd ever come to losing it. I'd cry on the way to work. Show less «

I don't have to do the lead. If I dig a part I'll do it.

[on Flatliners (1990)] It was the first movie I was in since Footloose (1984) that made any money. It did very well. A good career move, certainly. But it was a hard film for me to do, because I had a hard time with the character. He's honest, straightforward, decent-I wondered what the hell I was gonna play. Joel Schumacher's take on it was 180 degrees from mine. I thought the only way to deliver this idea of people medically committing suicide and bringing each other back was to approach it with hyper-realism. His take was to make it as gothic and fantastic as possible. But whatever he did worked. Show less «

When I started I thought I knew everything there was to know. You progressively learn that you know less and less. To me the greatest challenge is to get a little more truthful, to get closer to the truth in a way. That's not to say I want to put me up there. I never play the character that is Kevin. I'm not interested in that and I don't think anyone else would be either. I've got home movies for that. Show less «

There are two types of actors: performers and personalities.

[on Wild Things (1998)] I couldn't believe how much of a big deal it was. We never in a million years said, 'Okay, we've got to put a nude scene in,' but once it was in, I said, 'Fuck, leave it in, it's great.' When I read the script, I thought, I get this. It's so bad it's good, so over-the-top with its Miami-ness, its sexuality, and the twists and turns. I just loved it and felt like we should do something cool with it. It was a hard movie to market. I kept wanting to make it clear during press that we weren't taking ourselves too seriously. But that's a very fine line to walk. Show less «

[on Tremors (1990)] I'm sorry, I hate to toot my own horn, but it's a very good movie. They sent me the script and I loved it. No other actors were really responding to it. I saw the movie as this fantastic, subtle comedy. Show less «

[on watching his early performances] I never go back and watch myself. I'll see a film when it's new, maybe twice, but then not for years. If I'm flicking channels on TV and one of them is on, I flick right past it. It's so hard. If I looked at it I'd go, "Aw shit, I should have done this, done that". A lot of stuff about my past work bugs me. I guess I'm only seeing the faults. Show less «

[on filming White Water Summer (1987)] It was supposed to be a kind of camping movie, then it became about white water. It was endless re-shoots; I re-shot more in that film than I have in anything else-over a year. In one scene-because of all the re-shooting at all the different locations all over the world-I get hit over the head with a rock and fall off this cliff in Northern California, it cuts to a shot of me in midair in Canada, and when I land I'm in New Zealand. I swear. Show less «

[about his preference for being nude when at home] There's something therapeutic about nudity. Clothing is one of the external things about a character. Take away the Gucci or Levis and we're all the same. But not when the nanny is around. But I will with my wife and kids. Show less «

There are two types of actors: those who say they want to be famous and those who are liars.

I'm obsessed with zombies. I like watching zombie movies and I read zombie books.

[on filming The River Wild (1994)] Meryl (Streep) is probably the biggest icon for me in cinema. But she doesn't let you stay intimidated. She rolls up her sleeves and says, 'Enough of this. We've got to get to work.' We had an amazing time - physically it was very demanding, but also so much fun to be outside in Montana and Oregon. The temperature was beautiful, [but the water was] freezing. We wore wet suits and had one of those big horse troughs that they'd fill up with hot water, and we'd go sit in there and warm up. It was intense. Show less «

Some things I audition for. But there's no formula. I've had 15 auditions for, like, a nothing film by some guy who hasn't done anything-then again, Oliver Stone and Rob Reiner will say, 'You like it? It's yours.' I am starting to realize a pattern: If I really gotta spend a long time waiting to hear about something, it's not gonna work out. [1992] Show less «

I have a natural swagger.

[on The Woodsman (2004)] Initially, I wasn't offered the part. I was walking up the beach in Willowbridge, the British West Indies on Christmas Eve and saw this guy who I know peripherally. He's not in the film industry, but in Philadelphia real estate or something like that. He said, 'They sent me this script and asked me to invest in it' and told me there was another actor involved. That's all he said. He told me to take a look at it and let him know if it was a good investment. Normally, I would never take a screenplay under those conditions. You can't read everything. You'd spend your whole life reading scripts from people on beaches. I got home on January 2nd or 3rd and it was sitting there. I picked it up and read it and a barrage of feelings washed over me - anger, disgust, confusion, and comion, feeling angry with myself for feeling comionate. I put it down and knew that it was probably going to be my next movie. Show less «

And life has taught me that if I am to have a satisfying career, I have to take three things out of the mix. The first is the size of my part. The second is the size of the budget. And the third is the size of my salary. Once you get rid of those things, your possibilities exponentially explode. You get to work with the directors who matter. You get to make movies like The Woodsman (2004). Show less «

[1992 quote on his favorite role] The most challenging work and the best work I've ever done was in a thing I did for PBS called Lemon Sky (1988), a play by Lanford Wilson. I think it's the rawest, most complex work that I've had to do, and the thing I'm most proud of. And - fitting into the strange irony of my life - it's the thing that probably the least number of people have seen! Show less «

[1996, on fame] I'll tell you a funny story about getting recognized. I ran into Stanley Tucci on the street the other day. We're standing on the corner of Broadway and 60th Street, just catching up with each other, and someone walks by and they go, "Hey Stanley, I liked your work on Murder One (1995)." A girl comes by and says, 'Hey, Kevin, you were really good in Murder in the First (1995).' Then another girl stops, looks at Stanley, and says, 'Loved you in Big Night (1996).' This guy walks past and says. 'Kevin, thought you were great in Apollo 13 (1995).' I said to Stanley, 'What is this, the corner of Self-Esteem and Compliment? Maybe we should never leave here. Show less «

[on celebrity] Let me say this that I don't complain much about it because 95% of celebrity is good. People are very nice to you, they put you up in really nice hotel rooms, they give you free shit, I mean it's basically good. If I'm in a situation, and this rarely happens anymore, where someone doesn't recognize me and treats me like everyone else, I'm horrified. I'm not used to it anymore. That being said, it does get old to have to always be a monkey in a zoo. In the day-to-day thing to have people looking, talking, grabbing, needing something--I don't know what it's like anymore to be anonymous. Until you give it up, it's hard to picture what it's like, but yeah there are times that I do wish that it would go away, if only for a moment. Show less «

[on his death scene in Friday the 13th (1980)] They built a fake neck and chest, and I was [crouching] under the bed for hours [with my head sticking out through a hole]. It was absolutely awful. But I did have a classic horror-movie death, which is: You fuck the girl, you smoke the t, you're dead. So that was good. Show less «

[on his wife, Kyra Sedgwick] Kyra is a woman who made all the wrong choices when it comes to being an actress. She got married too young, had a kid and then had another kid. Show less «

A long time ago, when I was a kid, I wanted to be a pop star. Then I started taking acting classes. I moved to New York when I was a teenager, and really wanted to be a serious actor. I wanted to do off-Broadway, I wanted to do [Anton Chekhov], [William Shakespeare]. I wanted to have a Meryl Streep kind of career. When Footloose (1984) came out, I became a pop star, but by then that's not what I wanted. I wasn't being taken seriously. I wasn't smart about the industry and the ways that you can parlay pop stardom into a serious acting career if you make the right choices. I spun my wheels for a while, and then I got this part in Oliver Stone's JFK (1991). It's a small part, but very character-driven: gay, fascist, I mean, it was extreme. That turned things around for me. I didn't even read for it. Oliver just looked at me and said, "Will you transform yourself for me?" And I said, "Yes". Off-Broadway I'd been doing that, but that doesn't mean anybody in the movie industry is going to see you that way. Show less «

[on making End of the Line (1987)] An independent film with a small, fun part I wanted to do. I mean, these things come along where somebody says it'll take a couple of weeks and I go for it. The big draw for me was meeting Levon Helm. Show less «

[on making JFK (1991)] I had four days of shooting down in New Orleans. My first day, I get to the set, and Tommy [Lee Jones] is dressed as the Winged Mercury, getting whipped by Joe Pesci, as Louis XVI. There's gay porn running [on the TV]. Oliver introduces me to this extra, some kid he picked up in, like, the New Orleans meat market, and says, 'Maybe you could be making out with him.' I'm like, Maybe not. I mean, I'll kiss a guy, but I don't even know this guy. So I thought real quick and I said, 'Oliver, that doesn't quite work for me. Maybe I could be masturbating.' So that was my first day, in the background, in makeup and a bustier, playing with myself. The years between Footloose (1984) and JFK, there's not a successful movie in there. This one came out, and the phone started ringing - literally. Show less «

[on She's Having a Baby (1988)] I loved making that movie. It's one of the best movies John (Hughes) ever made. And I'm not just saying that to pat myself on the back. It talks brilliantly to commitment issues and what a first-time parent goes through. It was a huge [commercial] disappointment for us. I don't make movies for my family and friends, I make 'em so people see them. Show less «

[on the Oscar season] I call it the bitter season, because year after year, I've seen it come and go and not been a member of the club. And yet I've continued to make a living as an actor. Show less «

I worked for four days on JFK (1991) but it changed everything. It led to A Few Good Men (1992), The River Wild (1994), Murder in the First (1995) and Apollo 13 (1995). It was definitely a turning point. Show less «

[1996, on the Footloose (1984) soundtrack] When that fucking movie came out, for the next 12 years of my life, every time I'd go to a wedding, a bar mitzvahs, or a club, the disc jockey would put it on, at which point people would form a circle around me and start to clap in unison, expecting me to start flipping and performing tricks like a trained monkey. I've gotten to the point where I'll go up to the guy and I'll say, 'Here's 20 bucks, please don't play that song.' But the thing is, I love that record. I think the songs are great. Show less «

All roles are hard in different ways. Some are physical. Actually the hardest role physically I did was the Hollow Man (2000) and I was invisible in the movie. But it was incredibly, physically taxing and it got delayed. Murder in the First (1995) was both physically and emotionally terribly difficult. Show less «