Brian Dennehy

What really matters is that you do what you think is right, what you believe in, and you surround yourself with the people you care about in this world. That's what counts in this life.

My father had a good sense of humour about a lot of things, including life, which I think I inherited.

The older I get, the more interesting the part has to be. Bobby Knight is extremely interesting.

The theater business has allowed me, in a way the movie and TV business has not, to do very, very interesting work. So that's what I do.

It'd be very difficult to cast me as a ballet dancer. Everybody is, in some sense, controlled by their size and their gender. I'm not going to be allowed to play the part that Denzel Washington plays.

No one would ever cast me as an aristocrat. I think the big thing about being an Irish artist is access to melancholy. Especially the American Irish. The availability of loss, some kind of pain, is an important part of who we are. I think my Irishness gave me that.