Brian Dennehy quotes:

I idolize Gene Hackman. He is not a natural star, not an incandescent personality like Jack Nicholson, but he makes luminous the problems of being an ordinary man in an extraordinary situation.

If I could transform my stage life to the movies, I'd be Jack Nicholson.

I was in high school in 1953 when the Committee of One Million circulated a petition urging that Red China - one third of the world's population - be excluded from the United Nations. And I remember I refused to sign it, at 14 or 15 years old.

From 1965 to 1974, I served the best possible apprenticeship for an actor. I learned firsthand how a truck driver lives, what a bartender does, how a salesman thinks. I had to make a life inside those jobs, not just pretend.

I come from an Irish Catholic family, and hell-raising is part of the DNA.

It'd be very difficult to cast me as a ballet dancer. Everybody is, in some sense, controlled by their size and their gender. I'm not going to be allowed to play the part that Denzel Washington plays.

I remember playing John Wayne Gacy, serial killer, very sick, neurotic, screwed-up guy. You know what? There's a part of me there, too, and you explore that.

I like sports. I'm a big football fan. When I was a kid, I was a... I don't even know how to describe it... I was an obsessed Brooklyn Dodgers fan. And I think when they left Brooklyn, which was simultaneous with me starting college, everything changed, and I haven't had the same passion for sports.

I lied about serving in Vietnam, and I'm sorry. I did not mean to take away from the actions and the sacrifices of the ones who did really serve there... I did steal valor. That was very wrong of me. There is no real excuse for that.

At 13, I was a big, totally uncoordinated, hopeless football player. I responded to somebody else's rules, and I stayed just good enough to get a scholarship to Columbia, which was looking for scholar-athletes.

My grandfather was a really, really tough no-nonsense factory worker who emigrated from Ireland in about 1900 to Bridgeport, Conn. He had a big effect on me. Those guys who took a great leap out into what they knew not were the ones who were the real stars, the real heroes.

At 13, I was a big, totally uncoordinated, hopeless football player. I responded to somebody elses rules, and I stayed just good enough to get a scholarship to Columbia, which was looking for scholar-athletes.

Theater is a physical activity as much as anything. It's harder for me to learn the lines than it was 30 years ago. At the same time, I'll never quit working in the theater - until I can't memorize two lines back to back.

No one would ever cast me as an aristocrat. I think the big thing about being an Irish artist is access to melancholy. Especially the American Irish. The availability of loss, some kind of pain, is an important part of who we are. I think my Irishness gave me that.

In this business, you have a hierarchy of stars. Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks - you name 'em, they can play any part they want. Guys like me who are somewhere down in the middle of the pack, that's a different story. I can do things in the theater that I can't do anyplace else.

If you're sixty-something, pushing 70, the chances of you getting a tremendously fascinating part in the movies are very low, as to be almost negligible, or even in television. But in the theatre, there are still things to do, very interesting, very profound things.

My problem is, if any place I'm sleeping catches on fire, I've got a problem because it takes me 20 minutes to get everything moving in the morning.

My father had a good sense of humour about a lot of things, including life, which I think I inherited.

What really matters is that you do what you think is right, what you believe in, and you surround yourself with the people you care about in this world. That's what counts in this life.

The theater business has allowed me, in a way the movie and TV business has not, to do very, very interesting work. So that's what I do.

My father was a classic intellectual. From him I learned devotion, and I also learned about the life of the mind.

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that morality is not just a matter of opinion.

What really matters is that you do what you think is right, what you believe in, and you surround yourself with the people you care about in this world. That's what counts in this life."