I think of myself as an actor and not a movie star. I like doing movies; I enjoy it. But, essentially, I'm a theater actor. That's the only place I feel like I actually am a star. In the theater, I can put people in the seats and sell tickets.

"Film star," "movie star" — whatever they want to try to call you is limiting, in the sense that I think an actor has to be able to play characters. To separate these things — you know: "leading man," "action hero," "character actor," stuff like that — I guess if I want to be close to anything, it would be a character actor, which is what I think an actor should be. So any of that "movie star" stuff, I just don't buy it. It just doesn't make sense to me.

I'm not a movie star. I'm an actor, clearly, but at the same time, I don't have anything else going on. My hobbies are movies and going to the Film Forum and sitting there during the day for the double feature. That's my life. My life is music, books and movies, that's all I know. That's all I care about and I mean, as a fourteen year old kid, I was reading Entertainment Weekly and was curious about what was going on and I still read US Weekly. I don't give a shit. The point is that I wish that I had life outside of this, and I think that if this is what I'm doing then at least I want it to be a little bit more interesting or important.

Don't crucify me because of what your idea of a movie star is. I didn't start out to be a movie star. I started out to be an actor. You people out in the East have no idea what goes on out here. No awareness or knowledge whatsoever. You lose track of the human being behind the image of the movie star.

I don't understand the difference between being a star and being an actress. If you are a good actress, you can also be a star but it does not work the other way round. You must be able to deliver the goods.

Being an actor doesn’t make one a superhuman.

I'm not an actress who can create a character. I play me.

The real movie stars were Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Spencer Tracy, Montgomery Clift. How could I put myself in the same category as Clark Gable? Tom Cruise is a great movie star. Do I consider myself a movie star? I consider myself a guy with a good job, an interesting job.

An actor is an actor. Any role you are given or you have accepted to play is a debt to society, to mirror the role believably and convincingly. Anything short of that is failure.

I'm an actor, not a politician. I don't represent a race. I don't represent any group. I just represent the character I'm playing at the time.

I'm an actor. That's what I do. I'm not a stand-up comic. I do characters. I'm very good. I'll be better. But right now I'm a very good actor.

I knew damn well I would never be a movie star. It's too hard; and if you are intelligent, it's too embarrassing. My complexes aren't inferior enough: being a movie star and having a big fat ego are supposed to go hand-in-hand; actually, it's essential not to have any ego at all. I don't mean I'd mind being rich and famous. That's very much on my schedule, and someday I'll try and get around to it; but if it happens, I'd like to have my ego, tagging along. I want to still be me when I wake up one fine morning and have breakfast at Tiffany's.

I wanted to be a movie star. But movie stars are not what they used to be. When I was a kid, I thought movie stars were women and men who were in these great films that we still look at now...And people my age don't even know who those people are. I can't even have a conversation with most people of my generation about that, because they'd be like, "Okay, she's a freak..." And the worst part is, in terms of what people see of me, I have become this girl who just loves to be photographed, doesn't know how to focus, doesn't know how to work on set, just loves the attention, knows how to go out at night, knows how to party. And you know what? I was 20 years old. I never went to college. And I lived maybe six months out of my life like that, doing something wrong, and then I stopped. God forbid I should have ever learned my lesson. But at this point it's so hard for people to even believe that there was a lesson to be learned at all, because they just think I'm wrong. All these people think I'm never going to be right, because it's more interesting to fabricate this other girl. Who wants to read a tabloid story about a girl who is doing well?

It doesn't matter who you are as an actor; that's really always in the script. It wouldn't make sense a lot of times to drastically change things. It would threaten to change the story arc and all that kind of stuff. I think really what an actor does is an instrument, not a player.