Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Civilization is the sum total of all those activities that allow men to transcend mere biological existence and reach for a richer mental, aesthetic, material, and spiritual life.
I do admire Judi Dench and Sir Ian McKellen, but I'm a philistine. I like the good life too much; I'm not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons.
Acting is the only medium were people think they can just stand up and do it because they can say lines, but that is not so much the case. You have to study styles and techniques.
I was raised with a sense of entrepreneurship - my father owned a roofing business, and I grew up with the idea that you never want someone telling you what you can and cannot do.
I mean, before this, I would have said playing Bill Gates, because I'm playing someone obviously who is alive and is the richest man in the world. That was a heavy responsibility.
As an actor, depending on who you are, you might be stopped on the street and might not get all the privacy you want, but I'd rather have that than no human connection whatsoever.
I think the reward for doing comedy is doing the comedy itself. You get to go to work everyday and laugh and make other people laugh and to me there's no greater reward than that.
When I was 6 I became the poster child for my hospital and would go to banquets and make speeches. I did not get stage fright and I actually enjoyed talking to people of all ages.
If I've been dating someone for, say, five months, and she cheats on me, I don't think it would be worth it. I'm not committed enough to the situation to give her a second chance.
I'm already more famous than I want to be. And yet at the same time, fame feeds your potential as a creative person. You're in a vacuum if you don't have a certain amount of fame.
The camera does not like acting. The camera is only interested in filming behaviour. So you damn well learn your lines until you know them inside out, while standing on your head!
I have an intensive relationship with the thing that I'm working on, and I hope that comes through. It's better for me to not worry about the things I can't fix once they're done.
My pals, such as they are, in Hollywood, ask me why I love to travel to D.C. so much, why it's a vacation destination for me. I say, 'Because I sometimes have perfect days there.'
The education system should teach us about money; it's an incredibly big subject. I run into people all the time that don't have the first clue of what they should do about money.
Paul is Starsky, and I met him before shooting. He was very kind and encouraged us to go with what we wanted to do. It was very sweet to see them back with the car after 25 years.
If you don't want to investigate what you're passing judgment on, then it's your fault. And I believe that if people investigate Goldberg as a human being, I'm not such a bad guy.
It’s fun to watch someone like John Goodman, and yet it takes work. People say ‘he’s not acting, he’s being himself.’ Well it’s hard to be yourself, it’s the hardest job there is.
If you want anybody to have a different voice, you really have to visualize and hear the voices of all these people. Sometimes when I write with specific actors in mind, it helps.
Shopping in Thailand is super cheap and generally high quality. Bangkok is also safe. If you see anybody wearing camouflage holding a machete, don't be scared. They sell coconuts.
I guess I am in handsome - in certain parts of the world. If I was, like, in Mongolia, living on a mountain and in my village, I could be the hottest guy. In L.A., I'm... average?
I always at least try to come from some sort of human place no matter how ridiculous the character is. That's really awesome. That is more the work that I'm leaning towards doing.
I may see somebody in a club one night and go, Wow, she's the most attractive girl I've seen in a long time. Then I'll see her the next night and be like, Oh no, I don't think so.
Some comics really thrive on being disrespectful, especially toward women, and it's somehow understood as edgy, but I'm the opposite. I've never liked curse words for that reason.
Women find men attractive who are aggressive... but later on, they get worried that that aggression, that alpha energy, is going to be turned back against them and their children.
Goldie [Hawn] is one of the sharpest ladies I've ever worked with. She doesn't miss a thing. She's my greatest audience. She laughs at all my stories and in the right places, too.
I enjoyed playing around with Paulie in the Rocky films, and it was a pleasure every three, four years, coming back seeing how the wardrobe is. Is he heavy? Is he thin? I had fun.
I read the book and I think, "Well, this is the movie we're going to make," and then someone else reads it, and they take a completely different movie from it. And both are valid.
I've seen 'Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' about 25 times each, so I like all kinds of movies, but I'm drawn, as an actor, to dramas about humans living lives I can relate to.
You can't fake wrestling. We can fake punch, but with wrestling you just have to go ahead and do it. You really need to see the hand hit the face, the head butting and everything.
I read a lot of those Single Girl in New York books, like "Fear of Flying," where you could sort of put yourself, through transference, into the Jewish Girl in New York situation.
If I talk about Charles Dance I am talking about something else, something I operate and wind up and have to make an impression with and use to transmit someone else's screenplay.
You should encourage a child to show off. You can say to a child, 'Stop being rude,' 'Stop shouting,' 'Stop jumping around on the furniture.' But 'Stop showing off'? That's awful.
The stereotype of New Yorkers is that we're people who avoid warm human interaction, we're always in too much of a rush to enjoy simple things, and that we're just generally rude.
How precise you need to be when you're in a comedy, and the honesty you need and to have those two things meet up and have the execution just right, I always found very difficult.
I'm from a big family - I'm the youngest of seven - and my wife is one of four. So we always wanted a lot of kids. It's what we're used to, and for us it's what life is all about.
I get asked all the time if I want to do more dramatic acting, and I really doubt that dramatic actors get asked if they want to do more comedies. I don't really know why that is.
Sometimes films about oppression or suppression can be quite maudlin and quite dour. Sometimes you need a little sugar with the medicine and I think of myself as the little sugar.
I operate better with education and awareness, like I think all of us do. I don't like to be walking around in a vacuum, lost in my own thoughts. I'm much better with information.
It would be completely laughable if I claimed I was always motivated by the pure craft of acting and that recognition doesn't play a part. Of course it does - that's human nature.
I love my accent, I thought it was useful in Gone In 60 Seconds because the standard villain is upper class or Cockney. My Northern accent would be an odd clash opposite Nic Cage.
I'm just an actor, but if the extra part of it is that I'm helping people or people are being helped by the virtue of what we're doing, then that's just a really nice added extra.
I'd love to do a character with a wife, a nice little house, a couple of kids, a dog, maybe a bit of singing, and no guns and no killing, but nobody offers me those kind of parts.
I certainly have never been an actor who can play the Everyman guy - or, I don't tend to get those parts. I've tended to play eccentrics. I've played a lot of villains, of course.
My father passed away a couple of years ago, but he was very old. He was almost a 100 years old. And, you know, he had a very good life. He came to America and he had a good life.
Crimes against children are the most heinous crime. That, for me, would be a reason for capital punishment because children are innocent and need the guidance of an adult society.
If you read any of the biographies on J. Edgar Hoover, you find that they contradict each other more than they agree. Often times, they're often told from a political perspective.
I've played at the Comedy Studio. I never did as an undergrad, but I have in recent years, whenever I've gone back to anything at Harvard, I've tried to go there and do some sets.
When an actor is completely absorbed by some profoundly moving objective so that he throws his whole being passionately into its execution, he reaches a state we call inspiration.
Do not try to push your way through to the front ranks of your profession; do not run after distinctions and rewards; but do your utmost to find an entry into the world of beauty.
It was a great experience for a kid, because it was a bunch of kids playing on pirate ships and water slides, so looking back on it, it was the fondest experience of my childhood.