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. (On being a celebrity)

Critics can be your most important friend. I don`t read criticism of my stuff only because when it`s bad, it`s rough-and when it`s good, it`s not good enough.

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

I just let the work speak for itself. An actor is not afraid to take risks; to put on different hats; to be a good guy, a bad guy, a victim, an abuser. There are all kinds of people in the world, and playing them is what acting is all about.

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.

I always wanted, and still aspire, to be something more than just one thing, just one performance.

I do better on the first three takes; I won`t be better at 20 takes.

[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.

I`d really like to get the girl, shoot the gun, drive the car, have fun. I even have these kind of action dreams, where I`m the action guy.

Clint Eastwood has always been a hero.

I like directing. It takes a lot out of you, but I`d like to do it again-I just have to find a story I want to tell.

[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.

The business that people do in LA on the social level is amazing. You go to a restaurant, bump into this guy or that guy. The next day you get a call, and they want you in their movie.

[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.

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

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.

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.

There are two types of actors: performers and personalities.

I`ve made three studio albums and one live one with my brother. It`s melodic singer-songwriter acoustic-rock music.

There are some actor secrets you keep sometimes, and you want to keep.

I have a natural swagger.

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. (On filming Murder in the First during the 1994 Northridge earthquake)

If you`re an actor, even a successful one, you`re still waiting for the phone to ring.

As I was coming up on the stage, there was one source that could make or break you, the New York Times. Inevitably there would be one actor singled out for a better review, or worse, than somebody else. The effect of that was cancerous, divisive.

I`d always tried not to worry about the size of the role or the size of the film.

Ninety-five percent of celebrity is good.

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. (On The Woodsman)

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 compassion, feeling angry with myself for feeling compassionate. I put it down and knew that it was probably going to be my next movie. (On The Woodsman)

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).

There are very few things that are purely conceptual without any hard content.

I think we all have a lot of darkness in our bellies. As an actor, the challenge of tapping into that, reaching down into that sadness or anger, is very therapeutic.

Gary Oldman is impossible to steal a movie from. He`s such a great actor, he`s off the hook. I love him.

[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.

[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.

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.

[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.

I do struggle with how much and in which way, as an artist or celebrity, that you voice your political views.

A good director creates an environment, which gives the actor the encouragement to fly.

[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.

I didn`t get into this so I could talk about my work, my movies. You become an actor to act.

I don`t read my own reviews and I haven`t for probably 15 years. I read other people`s reviews, though.

I don`t want to stop acting, but acting in some ways is a young man`s game.

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

There`s the most resistance to an actor singing. It`s like I`m being disloyal to my industry.

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.

I worked for four days on JFK but it changed everything. It led to A Few Good Men, The River Wild, Murder In The First and Apollo 13. It was definitely a turning point.

L.A. kind of scares me.

There are people who tell you to shut up because you`re just a celebrity, but pundits, talking heads, they`re every bit the celebrity and a lot of them aren`t any more qualified than the average man on the street.

It does get old to have to always be a monkey in a zoo. I don`t know what it`s like any more to be anonymous.

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.

Any idiot can get laid when they`re famous. That`s easy. It`s getting laid when you`re not famous that takes some talent.

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.

If I`m in a situation where someone doesn`t recognize me and treats me like everyone else, I`m not used to it.

I don`t have to do the lead. If I dig a part, I`ll do it.

Before Footloose, the things I`d done weren`t cute. In Diner I was an alcoholic.

I`d love to be a pop idol. Of course, my groupies are now between 40 and 50.

I`m always happier and a better actor when I can really lose myself in a character and become somebody else.