Harrison Ford
I was one of the few people who thought Star Wars was going to work, and I hadn't even seen any special effects.Collection: Stars
American Graffiti was the first movie where the director let me have any input. It was the first time anyone ever listened to me. George thought my character should have a crew cut, but I wasn't happy with that idea. I'd always had pretty long hair back then - in college, particularly - so I told George my character should wear a cowboy hat. George thought about it and he remembered a bunch of guys from Modesto, California, who cruised around, like my character, and wore cowboy hats, so it turned out that it actually fit the movie.Collection: Character
An icon means nothing to me. I don't understand what it means to anybody actually. It seems like a word of convenience. It seems to attend to the huge success of certain kinds of movies that I did, but there's no personal utility in being an icon. I don't know what an icon does, except stand in a corner quietly accepting everyone's attention. I like to work, so there's no utility in being an icon.Collection: Mean
I think parenting is a huge responsibility. It was in my time when I was growing up and there still continues to be that responsibility.Collection: Growing Up
I don't mind playing older characters. I find it interesting. There are parts I couldn't have got when I was 30 years old. So, it continues to interest me in the same way that it always did.Collection: Character
I didn't play much ball. I wasn't much of a ball fan.Collection: Play
My work has always been important to me. The reason I continue to do it is because it's so much fun for me. I love my work and so that's what keeps me in the game.Collection: Fun
When I met scientists, I found them to be as various as any other group of people.Collection: People
What I look for is identifying what the utility of a character is to the telling of the story overall. If I can identify that from reading the script, then I've got a clear idea of whether or not I think the character is worth playing.Collection: Reading
You have to remember that baseball really was the American pastime in the Forties, not football, basketball or any other sport.Collection: Basketball
I think people only have so much interest in anybody, and if you barrage them in between the times you have something to offer them you become a personality rather than an actor - much more short-lived. I only work once a year. And that's enough.Collection: Thinking
I have an attorney. I'm looking to be rich like Harrison [Ford]. I'm trying to have planes and do all that stuff.Collection: Trying
I saw what luck and success I had as an opportunity to twist it up and do something different, so I've always sought out different genres and different kinds of characters.Collection: Character
The environment has become a political, polarizing issue.Collection: Issues
I had the idea that the film would be much better served by a Branch Rickey lookalike than a Harrison Ford lookalike. I didn't want the audience to go into the film thinking that they knew me from some previous experience in a movie.Collection: Thinking
My ambition from the very beginning was to make a good part for myself, something differently to what lately I've been doing.Collection: Ambition
I try to preserve a certain amount of time away from the movies, so I don't allow time to do those smaller parts that might give me an opportunity to do more seemingly 'artful' things. Although, having said that, I don't feel any lack of noble purpose if I do a film that's commercial.Collection: Opportunity
The only ambition I ever had going into and committing to wanting to be an actor was to live my life.Collection: Ambition
The job's always the same. It involves helping to tell the story and creating an alloy between character and story that serves the film.Collection: Jobs
I think American films right now are suffering from an excess of scale. Lots of movies we're seeing now are more akin to video games than stories about human life and relationships. Twelve- to 20-year-olds are maybe the largest economic force in the US movie business. I'm not a very nostalgic person - but I enjoy a good story.Collection: Thinking
I haven't purposefully set out to play heroes. I'm interested in playing the character who finds himself in extraordinary circumstances. But he's really either just saving himself or acting in the service of something that's important to him.Collection: Hero
It's a wonderful opportunity to be part of a child's growing up, which is always an endless springtime. You see the blossoming and the growing and the nurturing and the payoff.Collection: Children
There is no barrier to Indiana Jones growing older. It's not an age-based character. We can't bang him up as much as we used to, maybe. But I guess I can pretend to have the capacity as well as I pretended before.Collection: Character
I was desperately unhappy with it [Blade Runner]. I was compelled by contract to record five or six different versions of the narration, each of which was found wanting on a storytelling basis. The final version was something that I was completely unhappy with. The movie obviously has a very strong following, but it could have been more than a cult picture.Collection: Strong
The best movies are made from a point of view of an understanding of human nature and an understanding of history and an understanding of what motivates people, of what makes a good movie from an emotional place.Collection: Emotional
I just like the process of taking something written on a sheet of paper and giving it life and shape. I like the collaborative process of filmmaking, which is all simply to say that I love my work and I would continue to look for things that have the potential to be engaging and successful.Collection: Successful
I've never been bothered by proximity to special effects and I've never felt disadvantaged by them. They're all part of a movie, and when the movie's under control I don't feel upstaged by them.Collection: Special
A bad guy in a movie has a lot of latitude for acting. He can walk up the wall, crawl across the ceiling, go piss in the corner and everybody will say, "Fantastic!" But somebody's going to have to catch that sucker. Somebody's going to have to play the guy who gets him in the end. And that's a better part.Collection: Wall
It's important not to base your ambition on anybody else's history, but to figure out how best to use your own particular personality and understanding of yourself to help tell other people's stories.Collection: Ambition
I need a challenge. I need the intellectual stimulation. I'm a member of a community on each film, working in concert to try to bring an idea to life. It's a great job.Collection: Jobs
What I found was an emotional consistency with him. The words, the scenes, the situations - I wasn't mimicking what I thought Branch Rickey's emotional reality would have been.Collection: Reality
[ Chadwick Boseman] is a remarkable actor, and he's a remarkable person.Collection: Actors
I don't do stunts - I do running, jumping and falling down. After 25 years I know exactly what I'm doing.Collection: Running
I don't think I have something that's pronounceable as a philosophy. ... When it was fashionable to say, "May the Force be with you," I always said, "Force yourself." ... I'll say again then, "The Force is within you. Force yourself."Collection: Philosophy
That [film What's My Line] was very useful to me because it had Branch Rickey in a social situation. Every other bit of film [42] that I had was him making a speech.Collection: Speech
I had no expectation of the level of adulation that would come my way. I just wanted to make a living with a regular role in a television series.Collection: Expectations
If people recognize me when I'm out in public, I'm very nice to them. I'm very nice to people even when they don't recognize me. I don't even mind if people come up to me while I'm eating dinner, but if they recognize me while I'm having sex, I refuse to sign autographs.Collection: Sex
I don't take trouble at all to conform a screenplay to my iconography. I don't say, "We can't do that - the audience wouldn't accept it." I try to take the limitations of what is required to play a leading character and then screw with them.Collection: Character
Never claim credit for anything. 'Cause you can't righteously do that. There's luck and grace and accident.Collection: Grace
I am my age. I'm not making any effort to change it.Collection: Effort
You keep on going until you get it as close to being right as the time and patience of others will allow.Collection: Time And Patience
Whoever had the bright idea of putting Indiana Jones in a leather jacket and a fedora in the jungle ought to be dragged into the street and shot.Collection: Ideas
I don't want to be a movie star. I want to be in movies that are stars.Collection: Stars
Wood burns faster when you have to cut and chop it yourself.Collection: Inspirational
When we protect the places where the processes of life can flourish, we strengthen not only the future of medicine, agriculture and industry, but also the essential conditions for peace and prosperity.Collection: Strength
I like working. It is where I feel useful. I have no plans to cut down. I am happy with what I do. There will be a lot more of me yet, that's for sure.Collection: Cutting
For some directors, I'm the actor from hell.Collection: Directors
Acting is not about competing. Acting is about cooperating. Acting is about collaboration. It's about your utility, your usefulness, your capacity to add to the work that has already been done and will be done. You're just part of a team. I never feel competitive about acting.Collection: Team
I don't think I've mastered anything. I'm still wrestling with the same frustrations, the same issues, the same problems as I always did. That's what life is like.Collection: Wrestling