With any part you play, there is a certain amount of yourself in it. There has to be, otherwise it's just not acting. It's lying.
As a teenager I was so insecure. I was the type of guy that never fitted in because he never dared to choose. I was convinced I had absolutely no talent at all. For nothing. And that thought took away all my ambition too.
I'm shy, paranoid, whatever word you want to use. I hate fame. I've done everything I can to avoid it.
Life's pretty good, and why wouldn't it be? I'm a pirate, after all.
Me, I'm dishonest, and you can always trust a dishonest man to be dishonest. Honestly, it's the honest ones you have to watch out for.
People say I make strange choices, but they're not strange for me. My sickness is that I'm fascinated by human behavior, by what's underneath the surface, by the worlds inside people.
Tomorrow it'll all be over, then I'll have to go back to selling pens again.
I think the thing to do is enjoy the ride while you're on it.
The only creatures that are evolved enough to convey pure love are dogs and infants.
I'm an old-fashioned guy... I want to be an old man with a beer belly sitting on a porch, looking at a lake or something.
France, and the whole of Europe have a great culture and an amazing history. Most important thing though is that people there know how to live! In America they've forgotten all about it. I'm afraid that the American culture is a disaster.
Puberty was very vague. I literally locked myself in a room and played guitar.
I think everybody's nuts.
I am doing things that are true to me. The only thing I have a problem with is being labeled.
I don't pretend to be captain weird. I just do what I do.
If there's any message to my work, it is ultimately that it's OK to be different, that it's good to be different, that we should question ourselves before we pass judgment on someone who looks different, behaves different, talks different, is a different color.
Am I a romantic? I've seen 'Wuthering Heights' ten times. I'm a romantic.
I'm not sure I'm adult yet.
One of the most beautiful things in the world is seeing a mommy with her kids. There's nothing more beautiful, nothing more sublime.
I have this fear of clowns, so I think that if I surround myself with them, it will ward off all evil.
I have a place that I get to go to in the Bahamas. It's the only place that guarantees total anonymity and freedom.
If someone is being bullied or feels like an outsider, and they relate to something that I've done, even if it's just igniting a spark, that's great. I had that feeling as a kid. I was messed with no end.
Simplicity - that's what I want. It's been a rare commodity for me for a number of years, but I enjoy being able to hang out with my girl, read the newspaper, and sit back and start to read a book by someone I admire, like Lawrence Krauss or Christopher Hitchens. And that's it - simplicity, where the game of Hollywood doesn't exist.
Here's the thing - if Donald Trump is elected president of the United States, in a kind of historical way, it's exciting because we will see the actual last president of the United States. It just won't work after that.
I'm always for the Indian in the cowboy movie. Always.
My favorite color is black.
The beauty, the poetry of the fear in their eyes. I didn't mind going to jail for, what, five, six hours? It was absolutely worth it.
When kids hit one year old, it's like hanging out with a miniature drunk. You have to hold onto them. They bump into things. They laugh and cry. They urinate. They vomit.
I was angry and frustrated until I started my own family and my first child was born. Until then I didn't really appreciate life the way I should have, but fortunately I woke up.
I was ecstatic they re-named 'French Fries' as 'Freedom Fries'. Grown men and women in positions of power in the U.S. government showing themselves as idiots.
I may have a feather duster down my pants.
What I love to do is paint people's faces, y'know, their eyes. Because you want to find that emotion, see what's going on behind their eyes.
I remember in that red leisure suit I sort of felt like a Pizza Hut employee, and the white one was the ultimate, with the white turtleneck collar, that was the ultimate in bad taste.
You grow up a bit damaged or broken then you have some success but you don't know how to feel good about the work you're doing or the life you're leading.
There's definitely healing properties to being in proximity to the ocean and that breeze. There's something about that Caribbean climate and humidity.
When I played Tonto in 'The Lone Ranger' and was playing the older Tonto, I would just leave the makeup on and go to sleep because it was a four or five hour job; it was, from the waist up, all over me.
I like the challenge of trying different things and wondering whether it's going to work or whether I'm going to fall flat on my face.
I made odd noises as a child. Just did weird things, like turn off light switches twice. I think my parents thought I had Tourette's syndrome.
Escapism is survival to me.
It's been insane. From Whitey Bulger to the Mad Hatter, you can imagine the schizophrenia.
There's no truth anymore.
It's all kinds of these profound things crashing on you when your child arrives into the world. It's like you've met your reason to live.
Captain Jack Sparrow is like a cross between Keith Richards and Pepe Le Pew.
You use your money to buy privacy because during most of your life you aren't allowed to be normal.
I don't know if I can relax. Relax, I can't do. My brain, on idle, is a bad thing. I just get weird. I mean, not weird. I get, I get antsy.
The only gossip I'm interested in is things from the Weekly World News - 'Woman's bra bursts, 11 injured'. That kind of thing.
There's always that moment on every movie where you just go, 'Okay, this is that moment. I'm about to potentially fall flat on my face, and I might as well just dive in and see what happens.'
I don't go anywhere without a book by James Joyce called 'Finnegan's Wake.'
I marketed pens - on the phone. But the beauty of the gig was that you had to call these strangers and say, 'Hi, how ya doing?' You made up a name, like, 'Hey, it's Edward Quartermaine from California. You're eligible to receive this grandfather clock or a trip to Tahiti.' You promise them all these things if they buy a gross of pens.
I pretty much try to stay in a constant state of confusion just because of the expression it leaves on my face.
I am an American. I love my country and have great hopes for it. It is for this reason that I speak candidly and sometimes critically about it. I have benefited greatly from the freedom that exists in my country, and for this, I am eternally grateful.
There are necessary evils. Money is an important thing in terms of representing freedom in our world. And now I have a daughter to think about. It's really the first time I've thought about the future and what it could be.
It's such a funny thing when you see your daughter transitioning from your baby, your little girl, to suddenly being a young woman. If you're not really looking for it, you can miss it, and Lily-Rose is on that road already, and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
When you're confined to a TV series, and you have to play one character, it can make you insane. But it didn't affect me. I got out in time.
There's a drive in me that won't allow me to do certain things that are easy.
I hate watching myself on screen. I can't stand it.
The quality of life is so different in France. There is the possibility of living a simple life. I would never contemplate raising my daughter in LA. I would never raise any child there.
I'm not Blockbuster Boy.
People will say a movie bombed at the box office but I couldn't care less.
I detest jokes - when somebody tells me one, I feel my IQ dropping; the brain cells start to disappear. But something is funny when the person delivering the line doesn't know it's funny or doesn't treat it as a joke. Maybe it comes from a place of truth, or it's a sort of rage against society.
It's funny, because what happens to me when I read a script, when something grabs hold of me, I start getting these flashes of people or places or things or images.
I suppose the only thing at 50 you can really start to look forward to is just total irresponsibility. As you get older, you can just sit in a chair, wear anything you want, you know you can walk down; old people dress cool. You know they wear sweatpants. The elderly have it down.
America is dumb. It's like a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you - aggressive. My daughter is four; my boy is one. I'd like them to see America as a toy - a broken toy. Investigate it a little, check it out, get this feeling, and then get out.
I've had the honor and the pleasure and gift of having known Elizabeth Taylor for a number of years. You know, you sit down with her, she slings hash, she sits there and cusses like a sailor, and she's hilarious.
My job, as an actor, is to give the director options. You can only hope that the takes that you thought were the best were chosen. But, then again, if I don't watch it, I'll never know.
When I auditioned for '21 Jump Street,' it was a last minute thing. I had one of the worst flus that I've ever experienced in my life, and I was forced to go to the audition, the screen test.
After I had done the first 'Pirates' movie and 'Secret Window,' I went on vacation to escape with my kiddies and my girl, and someone said that there was an island down the road for sale. I said, 'Oh well, let's go see it.' I looked at it, I walked on it, and I was done. It had to be.
I'm just an actor, and if I can leave something behind that my kids will be proud of, then that's what I want. I don't want my kids to be embarrassed by anything I've done.
Anything I've done up till May 27th 1999 was kind of an illusion, existing without living. My daughter, the birth of my daughter, gave me life.
I don't want to run around and look at a shot through a monitor. That doesn't improve what I'm trying to do. I figure, once I've done my job, it's none of my business.
I always wanted to be a character actor rather than the poster boy that they tried to make me 100 years ago. An actor has a degree of responsibility to change for the audience, to give them something new each time, to surprise and not bore them.
Nobody's ever made a film in the history of cinema where they weren't expecting some return on their dough.
'Edward Scissorhands' was tough to let go of because I found real safety in allowing myself to be that open, that honest. To explore purity. It was a hard one to walk away from.
I always have a decompression period at the end of a film. Sometimes it joyful, because you're just happy to be done. Or it can be melancholy.
I have known plenty of people who, in their later years, had the energy of children and the kind of curiosity and fascination with things like little children. I think we can keep that, and I think it's important to keep that part of staying young. But I also think it's great fun growing old.
I started out printing silk screen t-shirts. I sold ink pens. I worked construction. I worked at a gas station. I pumped gas. I was a mechanic for a little bit. I went into sewers, down into sewer lines. I had a lot of somewhat unpleasant gigs for a time there.
With Ed Wood, it was this sort of blending of Ronald Reagan, the Tin Man from 'The Wizard of Oz,' and Casey Kasem.
At my very core, I'm pretty shy. I just happen to have a weird job.
I'll take photographs with kids. People who want to take photographs with me. People who like the movies. People who supported me. I'll do that all day, all night, that's fine. But the bombardment of the paparazzi is just... I truly don't understand. It just feels like this kind of gluttonous, horrific sport. It's like sport.
Everything is just very, very blurry. I've never had proper vision.
When I met people they said, 'You do look like a hobo, but you smell really good.'
Music is still part of my life, but I hate the idea of people coming to see me play the guitar because they've seen me in movies. You want people who are listening to be only interested in the music.
If you catch me saying 'I am a serious actor', I beg you to slap me.
The idea of dancing is the only thing that scares me.
Prior to 'Pirates of the Caribbean' - the first one in 2003 - I had been essentially known within the confines of Hollywood as box office poison, you know what I'm saying? You know, I basically had built a career on 20 years of failures.
How many chances to you get to make a musical about a serial killer? The minute Tim Burton approached me, I was in.
With my kids, they're told 75 times a day that they're loved. One thing I know is they feel loved and secure and happy and needed and necessary and a part of something.
I still approach a scene as one would approach a solo. There's nothing set or pat.
I was a million percent in love with Edward Scissorhands. I remember looking in the mirror on the last day of shooting... and thinking how sad I was to be saying goodbye to Edward.
On a film, you start to get closer and closer with the people you're working with, and it becomes like this circus act or this travelling family.
It's an odd thing when there is a fan page for my daughter who is not yet 13.
I've had some rank auditions where I embarrassed myself to new heights, which is hard for me to do. I was never good at auditioning. There are a number of actors over the years come up the ranks who are horrific at auditioning.
At 13, I was wearing plain t-shirts. Then I used to steal my mom's clothing. She had all these crushed-velvet shirts with French-cut sleeves. And, like, seersucker bell-bottoms.
I was the guy who had been bouncing around the film industry for years, and I'd been lucky if five or 10 people would see my movies, so Captain Jack did a big flip for my career.
When you disrespect Australian law, they will tell your firmly. Declare everything when you enter Australia.
When I can focus on something like guitar or painting, I do. I started painting people I admire, like Kerouac, Bob Dylan, Nelson Algren, Marlon Brando, Patti Smith, my girl, my kids.
I went through various stages in my childhood, as we all do, various stages of obsessions with people and things. And I did. I wanted to be the first white Harlem Globetrotter.
There is nothing on earth that could ever make me want to relive certain years of my life when I was young.
For me, it's always more difficult and slightly exposing to play something that's close to yourself. I always like to try to hide, just because I can't stand the way I look.
I've never felt particularly ambitious or driven, that's for sure, although I like to create stuff, whether it's a little doodle, a drawing, a small painting or a movie or a piece of music, so I suppose I'm driven by that. Everything I've done has felt very natural, and it's happened because it's happened.