Joe Mantegna Says

But we're still in somewhat a Puritanical society in a lot of ways.
Joe Mantegna

But what I will do is I'll acknowledge it and if it can be of any help the fact that I do acknowledge it then maybe other people will benefit from it because I do have somewhat of a public forum being in the line of work I am.
Joe Mantegna

Dean Martin is one of my heroes.
Joe Mantegna

For every Mother Teresa, there's a Jeffrey Dahmer.
Joe Mantegna

For the last thirty years in my career I never know what I'm doing next.
Joe Mantegna

I did plays and movies and whatever all over the place.
Joe Mantegna

I mean, believe me, I'm not for censorship.
Joe Mantegna

I mean, I don't work with a system as an actor in the sense of method as much as it's a compilation of everything I've done and learned all my life.
Joe Mantegna

I mean, it's the life lessons that I suppose you learn that nobody gets a free ride and that you do the best you can with the means that you can and try to open yourself to as much knowledge and all that that you can.
Joe Mantegna

I reached that day that I always thought might happen, where I say to myself I don't want to do this anymore. I'm looking for some stability. I want to stay home.
Joe Mantegna

I was fascinated by the Supreme Court.
Joe Mantegna

I wouldn't be surprised if some day, they put the Simpsons in the Smithsonian. It's become part of our culture, those characters.
Joe Mantegna

I'm a character actor so I've jumped around to all kinds of things.
Joe Mantegna

I'm in the wrong racket if I didn't want a public life.
Joe Mantegna

I've loved it, but I have a wife and two children.
Joe Mantegna

I've spent the better part of the last twenty-five years doing a lot of traveling.
Joe Mantegna

If at the end of the day, people look at it and say, oh, yeah, I liked his stuff, or for the most part I liked his stuff, or I've enjoyed watching some of the things he's done, that's all I can hope for.
Joe Mantegna

If you're going to believe in a God, then you also have to equally believe that there's a flip side to this.
Joe Mantegna

That's why I like the scenes where we're just in the kitchen having breakfast, because it's the interaction between people. The chaos.
Joe Mantegna

That's why I really don't play cards or gamble. Because I'd crack.
Joe Mantegna

There are a lot of people who will come to me for advice or whatever.
Joe Mantegna

There's good and evil going on. We have cops. We have robbers.
Joe Mantegna

There's now a Fat Tony doll, which cracks me up. But you feel honored that they asked you to do a voice.
Joe Mantegna

They put me in the drama class, and that's the path I've taken.
Joe Mantegna

When I played Dean Martin, he was dead when we made the movie but there would have been nothing better than to spend a week with Dean Martin if I could have.
Joe Mantegna

When they were small and my wife really had no other responsibilities, except taking care of the family and all of us, it wasn't that big a deal. It was fun. Hey, we're going to Moscow. We're going to Italy. We're going to Toronto. We're going to New York.
Joe Mantegna

Whenever you're going to play a real person, you run the risk of well, everybody in the world kind of has an image of what that person is and who he should be and so you really have to do your homework.
Joe Mantegna

You know the way I play golf, it's a good I do these things for charities.
Joe Mantegna

You know, you want to research it as close to the resource material as you can, you know, where you're going to be drawing it from.
Joe Mantegna

You learn that not all things fall into a certain kind of pattern that can be predictable and that can be understandable and that's going to be easy, you know.
Joe Mantegna

You talk to the real cops and they say ninety percent of it is paperwork.
Joe Mantegna