“If you get a good comedy once a year, man, that's pretty good. I may be pickier than some, but still, there aren't that many movies that are really, truly, honestly that funny.”
“In high school, I was too shy to perform. It's one thing to get laughs from your family, to be funny at parties and in class. It's another thing to get up on the stage.”
“Leaving a lot of movie sets, I've gone home and said, 'How come my hands are clean?' I should finish something and go home with dirt in my fingernails, because then you really feel that you've done something.”
“My first day in grade school, I was plain scared. I left the comfort of my run-down house, which I loved, and went to school where it was cold, it smelled, the lighting was bad.”
“My first manager, he had left Germany when he was five, but he would joke about the Nazis. And I'd laugh, but I'd look at him, and he was the first one who told me, 'You know, funny is a powerful thing; it's a wonderful weapon.'”
“My limited theater experience was when I was a kid starting out: two or three plays. I was good in one and mediocre in the other. My problem is that I have other interests.”
“My work is distinct and definitive and specific, and hopefully it is so that every single character is different, and they are - but there's probably an underlying element that's me.”
“The first feature film I did, when I did 'Night Shift,' I improvised quite a bit because I would improvise at the audition, so sometimes I would return to the original lines, and then when I was on set, I would improvise even more.”
“There are times when I consciously give the character something physical - a walk, the way he sits, how he talks, or his lack of physicality, which is like a physicality.”
“To make extra money, my parents would sell eggs and chickens. I was very little. I remember a chicken's head being chopped off with the chicken running around. I wasn't sure if my imagination was running away with me or if it really happened. It really happened.”