Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I don't pick my roles by genre; that's kind of silly.
You got to know what's worth keeping and what's worth letting go.
If you give me enough time, enough leash, I can become pretty reasonable.
I get pretty attached to the majority of the characters I play. I can't help myself.
If Mother Theresa went to Atlantic City, I don't think she'd start playing Blackjack.
I just keep working on things I like, and hope for the best. I hope people enjoy them.
The stage is a routine. It keeps you grounded, like a metronome. I find that soothing.
Plenty of people are onto the emptiness but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness.
Everybodys constantly being destroyed and rebuilding themselves, some more drastically than others.
Everybody's constantly being destroyed and rebuilding themselves, some more drastically than others.
I'm equally terrified of both comedy and drama. The only thing I'm really comfortable with is action.
That's the great secret of humans: we're all the same person. The best thing to do is just go for the hug.
A lot of times the characters I play tend to be kind of loners or they don't have best friends or best buddies.
I don't travel for fun, because I travel so much with my work; when I'm not working, I mostly want to stay home.
If you don't fight the system, you can either take advantage of the system or let the system take advantage of you.
Let's point out the elephant in the room: Actor bands are not notoriously successful enterprises. I can't think of any.
I never went into acting to be able to scare everybody. If I'd wanted to frighten people, I could have joined the C.I.A.
That's one of the great things about acting - you get to pretend you're somebody else, which is great if you get bored with yourself.
I've always been happy just to be working. It doesn't really matter for me how many people are familiar with my name or my picture, or whatever.
Everything that happens on Wall Street only fortifies my opinion that there is in fact a more ludicrous industry than the entertainment industry.
When you put your costume on and you get your hair and your makeup done [for a role] and you stare in the mirror you feel like a different person.
The magic word for me is pumpernickel. I love pumpernickel. I must have some Russian blood in me because I could just eat pumpernickel and raw onions.
People don't go to the movies to get the news, people don't go to the movies to learn a lesson. People go to the movie to get an emotional experience.
I like to play characters that get to do it all - to have a bit of comedy here and a bit of pathos here and a bit of suspense here, that's what's fun.
I started acting because I was miserable and crazy and wanted to be someone else, to run around and scream in front of people without getting in trouble.
One of the great things about acting is you can do things that in real life would get you in trouble. I think that's something I figured out pretty early on.
I know this'll sound obnoxious, but acting was very much an accident for me. I didn't have, like, posters of Marlon Brando in my bedroom when I was growing up.
I think if you watch a lot of what I do, you're going to ultimately walk away seeing me. I can't hide - that impression is a personal impression people have of me.
If you are going to be on TV for however many years, you want to make sure that you have writers that are giving you something to work with, and I got that in spades.
I certainly don't want to have too many pre-conceived notions before I show up because then you might be cutting yourself off from the real lessons of what is going on.
There's nothing routine about 'Boardwalk Empire.' It's like being in some secret society where they call you up and tell you where to go: 'Meet us at the corner of such and so.'
Well, I think anybody who's had a baby can tell you that once you have a baby, they kind of become the main focus. I don't think there's gonna be a lot of room for anything else.
Design is the fundamental creative activity with which we direct our lives, and collectively, the earth's transformation from its original, natural state into our human-made world.
When I'm working, I don't wake up and say, 'OK, time to go be intense.' I just look at whatever scenes we're working on that day and break them down - just real intense everyday work.
There are certain ways of being that people don't find acceptable or very pleasant in regular life, but you go out on stage and do pretty much the same thing and they find it spellbinding.
The thing that is always important to me is the relationships. I feel like until I get around with the actual people that I am going to be working with there is only so much that I can do.
It's always very daunting to play someone who actually existed. You have to honor that, and be specific and accurate and try to make people believe that you're that guy, which is really hard.
Theater is the best. That's where you get the work done. You just really get in there and figure something out about a story or a character or life or the world. That's where magic stuff happens.
There are so many people who make their fortunes of the misfortunes of others. I don't know if it's because the world is too damn crowded, or what, but it's something that I've been noticing for awhile.
Inevitably people will get tired of me. People get tired of everyone except Jimmy Stewart. I'm not saying Jimmy Stewart would get tired of me, I'm just saying people will never get tired of Jimmy Stewart.
My dad used to say, 'You have to become part of the machine to beat the machine,' and there's some validity in it. But honestly, even when I'm inside the machine, you still see me. I stick out a little bit.
It's obviously a lot harder to try and be a good guy than it is to be a bad guy. The world is a fundamentally evil place, it seems like. So in order to be a good person, you have to fight temptation and vice.
I've never worried about anything in my life a fraction of the way I worry about my daughter. It's much more than hoping people like the play you're in, or that your outfit doesn't look bad. It's the real deal.
I think improv training really orients you to character development, more than taking a Strasberg class or Meisner class. Not only is it about developing character really quickly, but it's also about being a good partner in the scene.
It is surprising that people are snapping photos and stuff and then putting them on the internet. For me, it is like, "Why would you want to do that?" It would be like knowing what your Christmas presents were before Christmas morning.
That could sound arrogant, I guess, but sometimes I feel like I have a bit of a Zelig thing. I'll blend in wherever. I'm from the South, so I'll have a Southern accent when I'm home. But if I'm up here in New York, I have a British accent.
If you don't believe there's some organising principle, or somebody up in the sky pulling the strings, then it can be very stressful. And nature itself is very arbitrary - it's not malevolent or benevolent; it doesn't even know we're here.
I enjoyed living in Chicago and doing plays for little or no money. I never actually thought that I would leave Chicago, originally. I wasn't one of those people that had a plan to pack up the van and drive out to Hollywood. I didn't want to.
One thing I'm a big fan of is the theater of the absurd. That's what I come from, that's what I love to do more than anything. What I love about absurdity is the words "comedy" and "drama" get thrown out the window and it's just life, which is absurd.
If you are only getting two takes and you are on a crazy set where there is a lot of noise and distractions and it is hard to focus - that is frustrating. But I don't mind two takes if there is a healthy respect with the work going on with the actors.