Tom Berenger

“I didn't know how to go about preparing for the part of someone who can't remember who he is. The frustration angle is written in, but there's also this incredible passive state.”

“I'm probably satisfied with my career 80 percent of the time.”

“I wrote a script. I actually enjoyed writing it more than acting. It's about the Irish rebellion of 1920, which is a fascinating period and place for me.”

“I have family obligations and all that stuff. I get my kids six weeks in the summer, which is a real intense period of time. I'm with them every minute of the day.”

“This is all new to me, these re-releases. I don't know how these things do. I don't know if it will be people who saw it originally or young people.”

“Sometimes I think I'm real predictable to myself and other times... you always wonder, Is this really what I wanted to do? Did I make a mistake? Should I be doing something else?”

“I've done about six comedies. Oddly enough, the script came to me from one of the guys in Platoon.”

“I was kind of confused. I thought, Well, if I get drafted, I'll go. Everybody was very concerned with it. I had friends who went. Some that came back and some that didn't.”

“Around mid-life everyone goes maniac a little bit.”

“We had training camp for a week, and we used the actual military drills of that period. We didn't have to work out much after hours, because going up and down hills all day was a good workout in itself.”

“I got to talking to an old actor, and he had a bunch of stories about the Rough Riders.”

“Most of what gets made now, you laugh your way through, go home and forget you've seen it.”

“In this industry, the new owners prefer to kill anything they weren't responsible for.”

“I remember seeing Bill Hurt in New York once. I talked to him on the phone around 1988 and that's about it. I was shooting in New York and somebody said Glenn Close came by the set.”

“I don't care about being a star. I can do a supporting role; I don't have to be a lead.”

“These days, you can do a TV series for five years and all of a sudden be on top of the business. Features don't even run in theaters very long anymore before going right to television.”

“While I was doing these plays in the beginning, I wasn't getting paid. I thought of it more as a hobby. Then I realized how seriously a lot of these people took what they were doing.”

“The Big Chill is one of those things that everybody can identify with. Between eight characters, they can pick somebody who's somewhat like them.”

“I was so exhausted after fighting for the project for five years, shooting it was like the Bataan Death March.”

“I like playing flawed characters, people who aren't perfect.”