Lance Henriksen Quotations

To me rites of passage through life, that's a wonderful, beautiful thing.

Corporate nationalism to me is a little bit like what would have happened if Hitler had won. It's scary stuff. It's totalitarianism in a different from, under a different flavour.

But to this day - I'm very literate now, I love to read, I read constantly - words don't resonate the way they do to a person with a formal education. They're like a maze, a puzzle that has to be opened up.

You know something, if you're not acting, you're not an actor - you've gotta work. No way around it.

In every respect, fantasy is like doing abstract paintings.

I'm a good guy. I love playing bad guys, but good guys that have a good thing going on, I like that, too. I don't like passive good guys.

In the late 1960s, I ended up in Telluride, Colorado. It wasn't like the country club that it is now. It was very raw. Skiing was there, but snowboarders have now entirely overrun it.

What's frustrating to me is when, on a low-budget movie, people don't take chances. A big-budget movie, that script's your bible; nobody's going to risk going off the page. But when you're doing a very low-budget film, why not take some chances, intellectually, artistically?

As a kid, there was a painting of 'Appeal to the Great Spirit' that I would see when I would get oatmeal bowls out of the cupboard. This painting, it was so real to me that it frightened me.

Growing up, I think I always had a sense of art: a sense that there was poetry in the world. I didn't know where I was going to find it. I didn't know where I was going to fit in, that was for sure. But I kept moving forward. There wasn't a future in anything other than movement.

The thing I hate most in acting is asking permission to do things. What you really want to do is say, 'This is my need; this is what's going to get me further; this is what's going to be alive. I don't ever say, 'Do you mind if... ?' I just come in and do it.

Because I've done a lot of theater, I know what power is and how megalomaniacs are, since I've certainly played some.

I don't think in words; I think in pictures, in images.

I have never gauged myself against anyone else.

If you're not acting, you're not an actor.

You do your work as fully as you can, and the ones who hear the sound join in.

Charles Bean is a brilliant director. I come in with an idea and try to do it, but I fall on my face. And then, he says, 'Wait a minute, there was a little moment in there. Let's try that moment and expand in that direction.'

I appreciate the idea that anybody would think of me as a star. But I'm really not career oriented in the sense that I want to be a star. It's not in me. It's not what I do. In fact, I'm amazed that I've even gotten this far.

I really like playing good guys, of course. Although, people make mistakes in their lives, and you could say that the mistakes make us who we are, by how we respond to them. I just don't want to play boring good guys, but I don't have that problem, anyway.

I've always known from the beginning of my acting career that you only get an acting job if you've got something to learn about it. If you don't do it well, you'll be condemned to doing the same role over and over and over again. If you do it mediocre, you'll have to do it again.

I always wanted to be an actor, even when I was a little kid. When I used to run away from home, I'd go to movies and sit all night watching Kirk Douglas. When I was 16, I tried getting into the Actors Studio, and they told me to get lost. I said 'I'll come back when I'm a man,' and I came back when I was 30.

I liked 'Scream of the Banshee' because it was a real challenge. I thought, 'How am I going to pull off this character?' But, I also thought, 'Oh, man, I'm going to go for it.' He's got all the defects of character that an actor loves to play. So, I had a really great time.

In a way, being born is a sort of ecological contagion. When you have longevity of family, we remember our grandfathers and maybe our great-grandfathers. We somehow don't have the capacity in modern life to remember further than that. All of the ramifications of their lives have an effect on us, and we're not aware of it.

My feeling is, I do a lot of low-budget films. I don't do low-budget acting. I have no interest in just goofballing my way through, thinking, 'Ah, no one's ever going to see this anyway.'

One of my favorites of all time was with Jim Jarmusch, called 'Dead Man.' I was in that with Johnny Depp. I ride really well, and I shoot a gun really well. I love the genre. Once I did Westerns, I was hooked.

Look, there's an element in acting where they hand you a script, and you know everything there is to know about this character. You know what's going to happen at the end of the movie. That in itself gives you a sense of world-weariness. It's like knowing your own death, every time.

The Aliens and Terminator imitations will eventually fizzle out. But there will always be room for a new phobia. It's the uniqueness of the horror genre that will keep it alive because it's endless.

You can't do every movie - although I do a lot of them - and the thing I'm longing to do is... it's not that I think I'm funny... but I long to do a situation comedy.

Usually the male control and domination that tends to be in our genes gets around a powerful woman who has the ability to make choices different from guys, it throws you off and you get frustrated.

I ride really well and I shoot a gun really well. I love the genre. Once I did Westerns, I was hooked. I love them, but there's been very few of them made. I never wanted to play a guy who was acting like a cowboy. I wanted to play someone who had a real life, but was also trapped into situations.

If I would had been born years earlier, I would have been in all the Westerns. It's just the way that the industry goes. But now, we are in an age of a lot of different kinds of fears, and you have the science fiction and horror genres doing our morality plays the same way that they would have done in Westerns. I absolutely accept it. In every respect, fantasy is like doing abstract paintings.

I might go visit it one day, but I couldn't do any more than just visit. I love it, don't get me wrong, but it's just too big. I'm going to be at a lot of other conventions this year, with the book and everything.

It's always the last one because it's so present in your body. I liked Scream of the Banshee because it was a real challenge. I thought, "How am I going to pull off this character?" But, I also thought, "Oh, man, I'm going to go for it." He's got all the defects of character that an actor loves to play. So, I had a really great time.

I'm not Tom Cruise. I don't have to look that good. I'm always going to have a problem because I'm thought of as someone edgy, but I'm not. I'm a cupcake.

Although, people make mistakes in their lives, and you could say that the mistakes make us who we are, by how we respond to them. I just don't want to play boring good guys.

There's nothing more terrifying than an actor who comes with an idea.

I've done a lot of video games and stuff, and I'm getting better and better at it. I don't have a prejudice about it being a different medium.

When you think of all the things that have happened, since that problem with computers in 2000 and everybody was afraid and they were buying water, imagine what Millennium would do with all the things that are going on in the world right now. It has the capacity to be a movie. But, anyway, I loved doing it. It changed my life because the guy that I was playing was so much more educated and smarter than I was, so I had to live up to it.

I learned a lot. I really did. Millennium is a state of mind. I always thought of Frank Black as the greatest chess player that could take random pieces of information and string them together into a scenario that was accurate. I never thought of him as a psychic at all. We need people like that.

The only one that's appeared in my dreams is the one from Aliens. H.R. Giger's version of that Necronom was almost like a tic. It's reptilian. That creature is like a baby and tic combined. It's very frightening. It scared the hell out of me, it really did.

The only one that I think I could beat, if my life depended on it, would be the Predator. If it was in my territory, in my domain, with the guns that I've got, I think I could hurt him pretty bad. That's the only one, though. When you get into metaphysical creatures, they don't play fair.

When I was a kid, all of the parents and grandparents came out of the Depression Era. They were all freezing bread in their freezer, they were covering their sofas with plastic, and they had plastic runners on the floor. There was a great distance between them and anything authentic.

My whole childhood, that made my skin curl. I was looking for something authentic. I think that drove me into the arts, I really do. That really did it. The only other thing that made me survive, as a human being, was getting into the arts. I was surrounded by people that were very bright and they invited you in. They were gracious. So, it gave me a great education.

There's a potter that lived back in the 1800s, in Biloxi, Mississippi, and his name was George Ohr. He was of Russian descent, but they called him the "Mad Potter of Biloxi." I'd love to do a great character study and comedy about that guy's life. That would be my dream role. I know it's an oddball thing, but it's true. He lived at the turn of the century, in the 1800s.

When I'm making a movie, I never watch the dailies. I see the movie once and that's it. It's really not about that for me. It's not about the externals. When I'm on a set, I don't want to see it. I want to be subjective in it. That's my habit now.

I attribute that to the generosity of people that are in the entertainment business because they are all struggling. All roads seem to come to acting, for certain kinds of people that have a reason for being there. They want to be seen and heard, but there's more to it than that. There's a kindred spirit of struggling to find out, "What is this thing? What are we?" It's those eternal questions. But, in the meanwhile, I've met some wonderful people doing this.

I have a lot of stories. I had done a thing called Nightmare in Red White and Blue, which was an anthology of horror films. I narrated it with a man named Joe Maddrey, who's a writer. He came to my house and said, "Lance would you consider doing this?," and I like Joe so much that I completely relaxed.

If the crowd is too big, it's too much for me. I took my daughter down there, and all I did was spend all of my time worrying that she was going to get lost because you're caught between somebody with a sandwich in their hand and somebody in a costume. It's really crazy.

When I do a horror or a fantasy film it all boils down to something in the script that surprises me. It could be a big thing or a small moment. If it's there I'll do it.

We are all guilty in someone's eyes. More so our own.

I think I would co-direct because I love actors and I've got a very good eye. I'm not a second-guesser. I don't think that I would be very happy, getting inundated by financial issues. I would love to co-direct with somebody because that would be a real freedom and an adventure, and then I could leave all the pain and misery to them. I'm not glib about it. I would take the responsibility to make a really good movie.

Im a good guy. I love playing bad guys, but good guys that have a good thing going on, I like that, too. I dont like passive good guys.

In the late 1960s, I ended up in Telluride, Colorado. It wasnt like the country club that it is now. It was very raw. Skiing was there, but snowboarders have now entirely overrun it.

I stay subjective because that's what I do. That's one of my abilities. I don't need to watch it because I've had the adventure. I don't do low-budget acting. I do the same acting, whether I'm in a Jim Cameron or not. I always try to do good work. There's no snobbery in there

I'm pretty slapstick in my life but nobody sees that. You get typecast. I'm from New York and I have a sh*t-detector that's outspoken. I'm very streetwise and the producers detect that. So they get me on a movie and kill me. I go into their offices and I'm sure when I leave they say, 'You know, he'd be great to kill'. I've been killed every way you can imagine.