Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If I was to direct Ron Howard, I guarantee you, I would put him through a living hell every day. I would demand so much of him. We wouldn't quit until he leaves the set crying. Weeping! Spent!
The work I did with Artists Collective led me to a scholarship at Uconn… It led to me getting a scholarship at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center and a scholarship at Trinity Rep in Providence.
I loved playing baseball, and the only reason I played was to play professional baseball. I wanted that to be my career for a long time. I turned down multiple jobs and meetings because of it.
There might be people out there who wouldn't hire me because they thought I should keep my mouth shut, but I'm not aware of that. Even if I saw evidence of that, it wouldn't really concern me.
I enjoy playing a quintessential antihero. There's something therapeutic about playing such characters. I know it sounds corny but I feel like I learn about myself when I play that characters.
People who are extremely inside their head, like he was, are caught in a neurosis that goes round and round. Then something will hook them and take them to their end and they can't control it.
Every actor looks all his life for a part that will combine his talents with his personality... 'The Odd Couple' was mine. That was the plutonium I needed. It all started happening after that.
If the world were a bar, America would currently be the angry drunk waving around a loaded gun. Yeah, the other people in the bar may be afraid of him, but they sure as hell don't respect him.
There's such a thing, if you're a finance man, as hitting the figures you need to hit. But there's no equivalent in acting. It's a creative field. It's subjective. That's what I love about it.
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him... The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
The Supreme Court is divided almost in half on the decisions. Talk about an international court. How would we ever agree with a lot of foreigners when we can't even agree among our own judges?
And if you call one a real estate agent and he won't sell you anything. He is a REALATOR. It's the same as what the old fashioned real estate agent used to be only the commission is different.
My own mother died when I was 10 years old. My folks have told me that what little humor I have comes from her. I can't remember her humor, but I can remember her love and understanding of me.
Believe in something for another world, but don't be too set on what it is, and then you won't start out that life with a disappontment. Live your life so that whenever you lose you are ahead.
The nature and the DNA of IMAX has been redefined in the past years to shoot these huge blockbusters. But I think that it's not the sole purpose of IMAX to capture cars exploding in your face.
One time I went into a restroom and a girl followed me in. I signed an autograph for her in the sink. It was pretty funny because she was in a guy's restroom and she wasn't embarrassed at all.
I always hated watching cooking shows where the chef would use ingredients that I couldn't get my hands on, cooking implements that I couldn't afford, recipes that I could never have access to.
I have no great urge to be minister of this or minister of that, but instead would feel incredible blessed to have the opportunity to be a champion for a constituency and fight for their cause.
As an actor, often you're stuck with these scenes in which a great period of time is in between them - for example, if you do a biopic, it might be a year, it might be a decade, you never know.
Nowadays people don't know how to handle it if all the ends aren't tied up and they're not told what to think in films. And if they're challenged, they think it's something wrong with the film.
There are a few giant companies that I love, and I love Amazon. Their customer service is impeccable: sometimes, just for the hell of it, I'll sleep on a mattress for three years and return it.
That is one of the reasons one enjoys acting. Now and again, you get scenes where you work with somebody really good and you have a good time trying to make it really work and really work well.
You're living with these characters for years and years, you need to have a lock on who they are as people, what they like, what they don't like, what they experience, and what they go through.
Most women in leading roles are very boyish looking. The one girl working right now who I think is a real beauty in a classic sense - the only real 12-cylinder engine - is Catherine Zeta-Jones.
The big stars I felt a kinship with were never the romantic leads. It wasn't Steve McQueen or Robert Redford - it was people like Walter Matthau and Anthony Quinn. My big hero was Tommy Cooper.
'The Knick' is set in New York during the 1990s, and it takes place around a hospital called The Knickerbocker. It's about a team of surgeons and nurses who are on the cutting edge of medicine.
I've written a couple of scripts. Actually, a pilot. I'm not sure I'm allowed to say, but it's a comedy about three young men in New York City, one of whom may or may not be a romantic like me.
The most important role models should and could be parents and teachers. But that said, once you're a teenager you've probably gotten as much of an example from your parents as you're going to.
After a devastating loss, your whole perspective shifts, and you're kind of in a blank space. You feel like on one side nothing matters, and on the other side a freedom because nothing matters.
I love doing voice-overs; I wish I could do more of them. It's a lot of fun to see how they take the voice and animate it and try to capture your own expressions and features. It's fascinating.
I'm always eager to work with people I admire, people who have experience, who've made mistakes and made great things. That's the greatest teaching I could ever get in developing my own career.
I don't like mushiness. I'm a very emotional person but I hate sentimentality. I don't like great demonstrations of emotion. But as I'm getting older, I'm getting much more open about all that.
I would go back to school after working on a movie, and it didn't feel I missed anything, like I had been away. I did mature pretty quickly, though, but I still sound pretty immature sometimes.
Sure, I suffered a lot. But it's not like the end of the world and it's not who I am. I lead quite a pleasant life and I'm able to divorce a perceived reality from my actual experience of life.
I like the incongruity of how in Iran, these people we think of as being revolutionaries or fanatics or whatever are just as aware of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader as our people are back home.
I think escapism is very important, certainly in my life. I love nothing more than escaping into the world of a film or a novel. To be involved in creating that for other people is a privilege.
After all the black man has been through in this world, he can still often reach levels of spirituality the most pampered white man cannot touch. Maybe what he's been through is the reason why.
When we were visiting New York City, I took my kids to the same playground where I went growing up. It was fun to feel that connection of having gone there as a kid and being there as a parent.
My height can be a problem. A lot of directors and photographers are sometimes not happy because I'm pretty tall and especially if I work with short actors the difference can be pretty massive.
I eat eight times a day. But it's what my intake is. I eat all the time, but it's good stuff. You want to eat that chocolate? You want to eat that dessert? Have that apple or vegetable instead.
I think my love of music comes from my dad. I was born with an ear for music, like him, and started with the piano when I was 4 but fell in love with the drums. My dad always has music playing.
Hard comedy goes for the fences. It's also what you might call take-a-risk comedy because if you don't hit a home run, you might strike out. It's either a belly laugh or it's no go and no show.
The thing that interested me, there are so many filmmakers I admire - like David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino - they have these themes where there's not much going on, but they were suspenseful.
Perhaps we don't need these religious concoctions to pillow the fear of death. Just the fact that there is an unknown, and something greater, can bring a feeling of peace. That's enough for me.
As I said before, I'm prepared to be prepared and I think that remains the same, you know there's no way to really know what it's going to feel like. I think for each individual it's different.
I love Scotland - I was made an honorary Wallace after my work on 'Braveheart,' you know. If I have two or three days off, I love nothing more than driving up there and climbing around Glencoe.
I idolize Gene Hackman. He is not a natural star, not an incandescent personality like Jack Nicholson, but he makes luminous the problems of being an ordinary man in an extraordinary situation.
I thought 'Deliverance' was a very good film. But it didn't have the success financially that 'Smokey and the Bandit' did, although that film made more money than 'Star Wars' in the first week.
My mom has a good way of engaging me in a conversation about the choices I make, listening, being objective and open-minded, and respecting those choices so long as they don't put me in danger.
When you make movies, it's such an important period of time, when you look back at each one of them. You want to be able to say that you did something that was a challenge and that changed you.