Quotes from Max von Sydow

I don't have a philosophy for choosing roles. Sometimes, it's just, 'This might be interesting; that might be fun to do.' There might be interesting actors or directors in the project, even if the part is not important. And then sometimes, you need the money.

There are casting directors with lots of imagination, but also some with not as much imagination.

Bergman has a very special eye for people. His background taught him to listen and to feel.

Film acting, if you don't play the lead, you come, and you do your scenes in a few days, and you act with a couple of colleagues. All the rest of the actors you never see, and you don't even meet many of them. And you don't know what will happen with what you've done. Maybe it will be in the film, maybe it will not.

I could never learn to be totally fluent in any other language.

France is, for me, the country of happiness.

When I know what the character I'm supposed to play wants in general terms, and when I know what did the other characters want to do, that's when all these wills collide and the emotions show up.

In this country, you have movie actors and theatre actors and television actors.

I understand German; I can read German.

I think the film you hear about the most is 'The Exorcist.' When people come up to me and say, 'Oh, you scared me!' I was the good guy in that film!

Between you and me, odd things happen always on set.

I've never been in a barroom brawl in my life. I just don't do such things

Only very rarely are foreigners or first-generation immigrants allowed to be nice people in American films. Those with an accent are bad guys.

What is important, I think, is to reach as many people as you can and do it as well as you can. Reach them and inspire them or amuse them, or maybe in some odd moments help them to discover something they hadn't thought of before.

I began imagining scenes in public which some drunk would come up to me and slap me in the face. Nothing like that ever happened, but I often wonder if I would have turned the other cheek.

I don't believe in devils. Indifference and misunderstandings can create evil situations. Most of the time, people who appear to be evil are really victims of evil deeds.

Most screenplays I receive are boring, and some are straight-out bad.

All of us, we deserve to survive.

It often disturbs me, when I see a film set in a historical time, that the people are too modern.

Ingmar Bergman had a great sense of humor, and he had a very special, characteristic laugh that you always recognized - if he went to watch a theater show, 'Ah! He is here tonight.'

Filming is repetition and many takes.

I was in such a hurry to be an actor. Now I'm sometimes mad at myself that I didn't stop and study for a couple of years.

It's not a matter of learning lines. It's a matter of getting into the ideas and the will of the person. It's a matter of, 'What does he want to do? What does he want to achieve?'

Mr. Bergman was a man of great working discipline. He forced everyone to concentrate when it was important. No disturbing noise during rehearsal. A code of silence.