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I don't have any ambition to make lots of money or win an Oscar or anything like that. It's not about that for me.

Every film is hard work, and a few lucky people do get Oscars for what they do, and it's recognition for all that hard work on a certain level. If you didn't do the hard work, you wouldn't be standing there. On the other hand, people do a lot of hard work and don't get Oscars, so it's a mixture of glory and injustice at the same time.

More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic.

Acting is a hard profession. More than anything, it takes fortitude.

When you're up for an Oscar, you just get offered everything. It's fantastic, but a lot of it you're completely inappropriate for.

You don't just win an Oscar because you're a great actor. You campaign for that Oscar: you engage with it; you go on the David Letterman show, and you do the interviews, and that's how you get out there.

Winning an Oscar is an honor, but, between you and me, it does not makes things easier.

I've trained myself not to put too much emphasis on awards, only because I never got into acting to win an award.

The hard part for me was being an Olympic gold medalist and having that persona; you don't see too many Olympic gold medalists go into acting. It's actually even more difficult. You're not taken very seriously, and you're looked at in a different light, so it was kind of hard for me to go straight from Olympics into acting.

It goes back to all of us wanting to be in Hollywood. We're all dying to win an Oscar.