The story was originally published in the September 2003 issue of Esquire. Read every Esquire story every published at Esquire Classic.
I'll bump into a guy in a bar, and he'll say, "I'm sorry, Sonny!" It's surreal.
Nobody should give a shit about an actor's opinion on politics.
One night I went over to get some dope from some Hollywood tough guy. After I left, my son Scott, who was only fifteen, went over with a baseball bat to kill him. I was laughing out of one eye and crying out of the other. I thought, Who am I kidding?
There's a big difference between wanting to work and having to work. And I had to learn that the hard way. Now money is very important to me, because I ain't got it.
You have to be very careful when you let someone win.
I'm sort of a Walter Mitty. I got fewer brain cells than most people, so when I got friendly with cowboys, I started rodeoing. When I was calf-roping, there was something about the dirt that made me feel clean.
Some guys say beauty is only skin deep. But when you walk into a party, you don't see somebody's brain. The initial contact has to be the sniffing.
Actors have bodyguards and entourages not because anybody wants to hurt them—who would want to hurt an actor?—but because they want to get recognized. God forbid someone doesn't recognize them. They'd have a fucking heart attack.
What's the difference between sex and love? I have four wives and five kids. I apparently don't know the difference.
For the record, I've never been in an orgy.
You're the only one who's closing your eyes at night. There's no one else who can do it for you.
There are a lot of guys in Hollywood who clap you on the back just a little too hard.
My kid was a great baseball player. I thought I had it made. Front-row seats at Yankee Stadium. Then he turned sixteen and wanted to be a rapper.
Showing up every day isn't enough. There are a lot of guys who show up every day who shouldn't have showed up at all.
I had great, great times as a Little League coach. People were talking about me quitting acting, and they would say, "What about your creative juices?" Coaching is creative, because you could take a kid who thought he wasn't any good and, within four minutes, change his mind. And I didn't have to wait six months for them to put music to it.
How good a Little League coach was I? I was a little hyper. One thing I learned was that talent comes from everywhere; it doesn't have to come just from the ghetto. But in Beverly Hills, because Daddy has a grocery store, the kids lack a lot of try.
I always thought of myself as some sort of athlete until I started playing golf a couple years ago.
I had my first puff on a joint when I was twenty-four and a half, and I was petrified. I thought I was gonna see elephants. Five, six years later, I'm in Hollywood. I got a little cocaine in my pocket, a couple of quaaludes. I can't do a little of anything.
My least favorite phrase in the English language is "I don't care." If you ask somebody, "You wanna make love?" or "You wanna play tennis?" and they say, "I don't care"...well, fuck you then—I don't want to play.
When I played three-on-three with twenty-year-olds when I was fifty, I didn't care if the guy was six eight—I threw the elbow.
I've never missed a day's work in my life, even through all the shit. But there were days when I was not on my best behavior.
I've been lucky. The critics never went out of their way to single me out for doing bad work.
To get over my divorce, I got a prescription to live at the Playboy Mansion for a while.
I don't think silicone makes a girl good or bad.
I'll see a beautiful girl walking up to me and I'll think, Oh, my God, I can't believe my good luck. But then she'll say, "Where's your son?" or "My mother loves you."
People wonder why first-time directors can make a brilliant picture, then suck on the second one. It's because they're a little terrified the first time. So they listen to all the experts around them.
There's nothing more boring than actors talking about acting.
I never saw my dad cry. My son saw me cry. My dad never told me he loved me, and consequently I told Scott I loved him every other minute. The point is, I'll make less mistakes than my dad, my sons hopefully will make less mistakes than me, and their sons will make less mistakes than their dads. And one of these days, maybe we'll raise a perfect Caan.
One day you're playing the boyfriend of Nicole Kidman, the next you're playing her dad. That ain't fun, but whaddya gonna do?
