Quotes By Ron Perlman

I'm very happy.

I'm kind of one of these guys who wants to play everything once before it's all over.

So much of my aesthetic was formed by my dad.

I'm just trying to make up for lost times, and I have total awareness that when the work is coming it doesn't mean it's going to continue to come, so I'm taking advantage of this phenomenal period that I'm in now, to its fullest.

Somebody who doesn't care if they live or die is the most dangerous human being on earth.

I've been a professional actor for almost 40 years.

I don't think that I've had a career like anyone else's, but there are hosts and hosts of actors whose careers I admire.

My self-confidence didn't come from my appearance, it came from other things that I did. But certainly not my appearance.

I've certainly been very blessed with opportunity.

Really, I was such a late bloomer, I really didn't learn how to be me until I was in my late '40s, which is when I started playing roles that were closer to me.

I love great animation.

I like to believe that everyone is born with the same skill set, and that it is the influences that one comes upon.

I feel as though my criteria are based more on how challenging the role is, it doesn't have to fit into any particular profile, is it something that I've never done before, and is it something that I feel like I can really feel challenged and therefore fully engaged in, and that's when the work gets to be the most fun.

In the early '90s, when those little art films started coming out, we were introduced to Quentin Tarantino and guys like that, and independent cinema was something that everyone wanted to be a part of.

I never direct myself, because I don't like working with me. I would punch me in the mouth if I had to take my direction.

The thing that's cool about the recording booth is that it's so perfunctory, so cut-to-the-chase.

I think in the early part of my career, the roles were so disparate that it never gave anybody an opportunity to understand my essence and what I would be good at doing, as opposed to what I would not be good at doing, so these little moments of beautiful things that were happening to me were consistent, but very few and very far between.

Fearless people are interesting to watch.

It's really disgusting what Hollywood can do to a guy.

Every job has a unique situational circumstance.

Every time you get on a stage or in front of a camera, the whole exercise is about imagination. You're constantly depicting something that doesn't exist, and trying to find the reality of it. Once you settle on that premise, everything else is a matter of degrees.

I will not do a role that I don't think I can do, that I'm not interested in, where there's no humanity, that doesn't have any kind of handle for me at all because I know I'll just stink the joint up.

I say yes to almost anything that comes my way.

I think now that I'm in the autumn of my life, and I'm getting a chance of having an overview and looking at the shape of how things happen, when things happen, why things happen, I think it was fitting that I spent most of my early career doing mask work, because I just don't think I was that comfortable in my own skin.

Distortions control my self-image, like they do for a lot of us. It's irrational.

Some of the great characters that I've played had to be transformational.

I'm a city boy.

Let me put it this way: I definitely need to understand the villains I play. The best cause pain to anesthetize themselves against their own pain.

I don't have any preferences. I feel as though my criteria are based more on how challenging the role is, it doesn't have to fit into any particular profile, is it something that I've never done before, and is it something that I feel like I can really feel challenged and therefore fully engaged in, and that's when the work gets to be the most fun.

Independent film is almost nonexistent right now, because all the distributers that used to love to put out these little art films are all out of business right now, because it costs so much to open a movie.