Dennis Farina

“This is my first experience working in a foreign movie, but the mechanics, I think, are pretty much the same all over; you still have to wait in the trailer.”

“I wasn't so sure about signing up for 'Law & Order.' I liked the show, but another TV series? I'll tell you, though, it's been great, and I had no idea how popular the show was.”

“I was a policeman for 18 years.”

“People are always telling me to shut up about Chicago.”

“For some reason or another, 'Richard Diamond, Private Eye,' still sticks out in my mind. I don't think I particularly liked that show, but for some reason, he sticks in my mind.”

“My parents, I don't know about 'strict,' but I would say they were fair and judicious, you know?”

“Sometimes I do pinch myself about the life I've had.”

“I've worked on what I think are good things.”

“You can't act for the editing. You have to leave that to him. So you just go in and do the scene the way you think is right or whatever you're directed to do, and leave the rest of that technical stuff up to the director.”

“We know television should educate and inform, and I believe it should entertain.”

“My best year was probably 1948, and after that, it's been downhill for me.”

“Chicago's always a friendly place to me.”

“Most cop movies and TV shows are fantasies.”

“I know people who go back and check themselves, but it drives me crazy. Everybody wants to look in the mirror and see Cary Grant looking back at them, but that's just not the case.”

“There's a whole catalogue of actors that never went to acting school.”

“I had seen 'Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' and I thought that was a different kind of film than I'd seen before, with that kind of editing and slick camera movements.”

“I don't like to be talked into anything. I don't want to be cajoled.”

“I've been involved in some movies that I really thought were going to take off that didn't. And then I've thought, 'This movie's not going anywhere,' and it worked. The same thing with television shows.”

“When they released Sidewalks of New York, there were some shots with the towers they were going to take out, and Ed told them no. I don't think they can deny the towers were a part of New York.”

“If I'm characterized as a character actor, that's fine with me. Whatever they want to call me is fine.”