Peter Riegert

You have to have an ego to be an actor, but you need an ego just to get through life! Unless you want to sit on a corner and suck your thumb, it takes a healthy ego to get up in the morning and say, 'I deserve to be here.'

I think when you're younger, as an actor you have much more of a notion that you are doing something to the audience. But with experience, I think you begin to worry less about what the audience's experience is and concentrate on working with the other actors, and that tends to let the audience do more work.

I've learned there is a void in adult stories across the land. Hollywood, whatever that is anymore, is losing their ability to tell those stories because they're not even thinking of that audience.

Sometimes you make a connection with a writer or a piece of material, and there's not much to ask.

In 2000, I realized I had reached that certain age when the parts get scarcer. So I decided to try my hand at directing.

It's a very neurotic time we live in, this postanalytical period where everybody goes to a shrink to solve their problems.

Obviously, any time you're closer in terms of what your knowledge is to a character, you can add something. But an actor's job is not to play only people he can identify with.

A movie is a filmed rehearsal in a way. The audience doesn't know that because you're taking out the things that don't work. There's no comparison to the theater because it's live. But making a movie is just as challenging and exciting, I find. A movie is pure process. The theater is the result of process.