Quotes

[at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival, on the "obscene" amounts being paid to actors] It's sick. I want nothing to do with it.

Early on, I decided that I was going to lie to the press. The best approach to talking about my personal life was to lie.

I've made a lot of mistakes and I don't regret any of them. Sometimes, that's the only way you learn.

America is in a difficult position right now. It has so much wealth, it has become obese and gluttonous. It will change but it has to get through this time now. It's not that I wish I was not from America. It just goes through these peculiar times. I could live anywhere. But I wouldn't want to abandon a country just because it's being silly. I'll do what we did in 1968, and try and change it and get some sense into it.

There's nothing in the United States to do except the independents. Certainly not in the studios. It's a situation where films are made for $100m and they knock out all competition. Their audiences are eight to 20. It feels silly being a 60-plus year-old man in those films, which are basically cartoons and high technology.

You convince yourself you can fix the screenplay, because there's a lot of money involved. But you can never make it work. If the script has a hole in it, it will always have that hole.

I didn't stay in a popular vein. I never really got stamped like that. I worked very hard to keep changing my image.

There's an understanding about addiction. It's just learning about yourself. Either things are tough and you detach yourself or it becomes an experiment and a lifestyle. The thing about addiction is that you don't feel things. It's about cutting the pain off, whether it's physical or psychological.

There's always a bit of catharsis in filmmaking in general, in the arts. We're really all alone. We can't ever get inside another person's spirit, and see the world they do. So we are alone in that sense. The only way we have to communicate feelings is through words. I became obsessed about that.

If you feel you have a film that's valid, you stick your ass on the line.

I never felt comfortable in real life very well. It's always been an awkward kind of thing for me and so when I hit the stage I just sensed freedom. I sensed here's a place that I can have all the experiences of life and not feel uncomfortable about it.

[2011, on turning 70] When you start thinking about death more than sex, you know you're getting old. At 70, you crest that hill. In the sixties, you're still thinking you could do something about this slow disintegration of the body. As Katharine Hepburn used to say to me: "Aging, Nick, is boring." Now I know what she means.

[on receiving an Oscar nomination for his role in Warrior (2011)] I put up boundaries at the beginning with Gavin [Gavin O'Connor]. I said, "I don't think I should associate with the actors, with the boys. I should stay away from them." There's a kind of familiarity that happens if you're out drinking with the boys and that kind of thing. It makes the work a little more difficult.

[on Katharine Hepburn] She is a legend. But once you get past that, she's just a kind of cranky old broad who's a lot of fun.