M. C. Gainey Quotations

If I play a cop, it's always a racist cop or a trigger-happy cop or a crooked cop - but by and large I play cowboys, bikers, and convicts.

You know what, it's a time honored tradition in movies in America that if you kill enough people in your 30s and 40s and 50s that by the time you get into your 60s you become loveable.

You know you've been around a long time when your stuntman says, 'Yeah, my grandfather doubled you.'

'Con Air' was kind of a turning point for me, in my mind. I never shot anybody in that movie - I never did anything bad - because there were so many bad guys in that movie. I said, 'The hell with this, I'm just gonna be a lovable guy.' I'm like Steve McQueen in 'The Great Escape.'

All my life, people have asked me what I was so mad about. 'Why you so mad?' And I was never mad. I'm not mad, I just look mad.

I just have that sort of face and when I got to Hollywood in the late '70s they took one look at me and said, 'Get him a gun. You definitely should be carrying a gun,' and so a lot of it is just the way I look. I look like I'm angry and dangerous, and in fact, I'm loveable and kind.

I realized that after years of studying Shakespeare and Chekhov and regional repertory theater, what I really wanted to do was bust in and rob a bank and jump in the screaming getaway car and tear through the city and get in a shootout.

With a face like this, there aren't a lot of lawyers or priest roles coming my way. I've gotta face that was meant for a mug shot and that's what I've been doing for the past thirty years. If I play a cop, it's always a racist cop, or a trigger-happy cop or a crooked cop - but by and large I play cowboys, bikers, and convicts.