Quotes from Gary Cole

I don't think anyone sets out to do something bad, it's just that it's very difficult.

I grew up with Apocalypse Now and Badlands, so I had a real awe thing going.

I was initially a leading man, but only on television.

I think it had something to do with my love of music, especially rock music.

You can go out in a good movie and look bad as well.

Christopher Walken could literally read a phone book and fill a theater, and it would be interesting to watch. I've often wanted to produce a show and ask him if he'd do that. All week long, he could read the As on Tuesday, the Bs on Wednesday; we'd see how long it would last.

For a stage actor to be there with the words and the creator of the words - it doesn't get much better than that.

I messed around in high school, but I pretty much put it away until I did a television show in San Francisco.

You always know when something works it's a result of everything firing on all cylinders.

There's only a handful of people who are just purely, inherently funny, and I'm not one of them. I need content and a situation. I don't just walk on the screen, and people go, 'Ha ha ha!' There are people like that, and they can do almost anything. It's the Christopher Walken Rule.

'Fatal Vision' was basically the first thing I did on camera.

Good decisions don't make life easy, but they do make it easier.

Even people who aren't engaged on the actual battlefield - the effects of war reach out like tentacles into families, into economies, into the changing geography, into politics. It shakes up everything.

One of the most fun characters I played on a television series, which didn't last long... was a show called 'American Gothic' that Shaun Cassidy created. I would have loved to have done that show forever. That character was so funny yet demonic. It was really good writing and a really good idea. I loved all the people on the show.

There is no handbook about how a career is going to go.

When you're in a movie with Will Ferrell, well, it's time to at least sometimes throw the script away. And that character in 'Talladega Nights' I found a lot easier to kind of riff with because I related to it more, those kind of Southern, almost rednecky guys. That's a culture that I'm familiar with, that makes sense for me to spew.

You never know, when you commit to something, what else could have been. I'm so bored with that concept anymore. 'If only I didn't do this, I could have done this.' It was in front of me, they asked me to do it, and it seemed like good timing.

It seems you can ask any friend, any relative, and they'll be able to tell you about someone they know with autism.

I'm a huge fan of sports movies.

The one nice thing about doing a character for a long time is, you begin to feel more comfortable, and you are thinking less and behaving more.

I love going to concerts, so that whole environment is something that intrigues me anyway.

Then, at some point, you get identified with certain things.

People say you get identified with a role, and you get stereotyped, but I haven't found that to be the case.

Other than advances in technology and equipment, making a movie is the same as it was when I started, at least. I don't go back to the silent era.