Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
With something like cancer, there is a feeling that you can fight it in some way or control your response to it, but with dementia there is the fear of losing control of your mind and your life.
I think one of the things I was most interested in finding out was how differently we approached our work. And my reality was that we didn't approach it very differently at all, which was funny.
As a child I wanted to be everything from a doctor, lawyer, flight attendant to an IT pro- fessional and could never make up my mind. I figured as an actor I'd get to play all these professions.
When you play the king of elves and alien warlords, little me is very uninteresting. But, at the same time, actors feel this obligation to be transparent, and I truly don't understand the point.
You have to enjoy life in the process. It may sound corny, but it's true. At the end of the day, we can't always achieve everything that we dream of but you do have to enjoy life in the process.
I'm never really conscious of saying, "I'm going to take on a specific role to combat a certain image in the public eye." I think that's pretty manipulative and transparent to the public anyway.
Well, I think I've made 44 films and only like four times I've played real characters I'm just drawn to people who have a pioneer spirit, this extraordinary energy and commitment to their cause.
As much as my parents were worried about me moving to London at 17, they could see that I was hungry to find my path. And it probably helped that they saw me succeeding at it, slowly but surely.
I'm not one of those actors who needs the media spotlight all the time to feel gratified. I'm happy to do one project a year and take the rest of the year off as long as that project is special.
Kids feel like they have to puff up or shrink. These reclusive qualities begin to develop because you feel that who you are is going to either be accepted or rejected by your family and friends.
At graduate school in 1999, I finally had the chance to examine why I believe what I believe. I realised that I'd had no period in my life where I'd consciously tried to develop my own theology.
I think we're all a little afraid of the dark. If you lived in the country, as I did, there's nothing quite like country dark, which was really black. And as a child, your imagination runs wild.
If you look a little punkish, then they’re going to give you the parts. And if you play an iconic villain early on in your career, you tend to get asked to play one over and over and over again.
If you look a little punkish, then they're going to give you the parts. And if you play an iconic villain early on in your career, you tend to get asked to play one over and over and over again.
I'm blessed. I have a 13-year-old girl's eye and a 14 year-old boy's eye. I've been given the gift of sight by people who decided to donate organs. I try to do as much organ-donor work as I can.
I started riding bikes when I was really young, but I stopped when I was 19 because my mother asked me too, so I stopped riding for 35 years and now I'm just addicted. It is my only addiction...
The one thing I would tell everyone - myself included - would be to just chill out. Life, by design, provides us with plenty of drama without us having to augment it and invent more. Just chill.
I grew up on Lake Michigan during the PCB explosion, and I remember seeing the sick, dead fish with tumors, the weird deformed seagulls, the scum and the filth floating. We couldn't go swimming.
The great thing about getting older is that you learn not to care about being cool. I'm happy with who I am, I know what I like and I can't see myself changing… not for a little while, at least.
All my life, I've felt people are looking at me. So, when I became known, it was like, 'I'm not imagining this any more. People genuinely are staring at me. Oh, Christ, now they're coming over!'
I think we all have a similar philosophy about comedy and comic performance which is that it's at its best when you can see the pleasure the performer has, when you can see a glimmer in the eye.
I was born in New Hampshire, moved to Tennessee when I was 9, and lived there through high school, then went to school at College of Charleston, so definitely a lot of pieces of the South there.
People get really nuts around cars. They get angry at cars, they get angry at their car, they get angry at people driving in cars; there's something really comical about that, about automobiles.
I'm not in a rush to do anything. And I wouldn't say I pick and choose. When it comes to producers picking people for roles I don't think it's between me and Tom Cruise, do you know what I mean?
All the kids in the cast tell me they hated high school, but I had the best time. I guess I was one of the popular kids. I played soccer, I was class president—I even dated the homecoming queen.
The studio rented a house for my wife in Los Angeles under a phony name to keep reporters away. Whenever I wanted to visit her and my children, I would have to sneak in the back door after dark.
You know, you can try and plan [filming] as much as you want, but you get there on game day and you get thrown a curve ball, I guess, hey, the game plan goes out the window. You've got to adapt.
I think one of the best words in the English language is 'compassion.' I think it holds everything. It holds love, it holds care... and if everybody just did something. We all make a difference.
My mom and father are extremely proud. They love it when I don't die. I've done so many movies where I've died that their first question when I book a job is, 'So, are you going to die in this?'
I don't know what's going to happen. I'm flavor of the month at the moment, but somebody else is going to roll around the corner in three months' time. I just want to keep working. I can't stop!
I had all the usual ambition growing up. I wanted to be a writer, a musician, a hockey player. I wanted to do something that wasn't nine to five. Acting was the first thing I tried that clicked.
I remember the first job I ever had was working on 'Firefly,' and I was talking to Joss Whedon, and he was asking if I was going to Comic-Con. He called me a loser for not going that first year.
The big turn in the late 90s was that I realized I was going to be doing this for a long time. I was fairly sure I was going to be an actor for the rest of my life, which I think calmed me down.
They were looking for actors - real actors - who could play instruments. There was a lot of improvisation and scene work involved in addition to the music. The auditions went on for a long time.
I always say if you put someone from a small town into a big city for ten years, then when they go back, they'll act differently. Are they the same person? Sure, but do they act different? Yeah.
As an actor it's like, go with whatever excites you as an actor. What are you're going to invest yourself in as a character? What are you going to get into? Have a variety of characters to play.
I was used to playing misled youth, rough-and-tumble guys. It was nice to get back to a big-hearted, warm and gentle soul, a guy who is destined for something a lot larger than he ever expected.
African art is functional, it serves a purpose. It's not a dormant. It's not a means to collect the largest cheering section. It should be healing, a source a joy. Spreading positive vibrations.
I was being trained because I wanted to be a preacher like my father. I wanted to talk about Moses; I wanted to talk about God... I wanted to talk about the apostles, the disciples and all that.
I told myself a while back, 'Love what you do, but don't fall in love with what you do.' That way you won't be brokenhearted if ever it gets canceled five episodes in - which has happened to me.
I don't know, on a sitcom, and in theatre especially, you have to really be listening to an audience. And if you're losing them, you can hear the sniffs, and the playbills shuffling and whatnot.
We're really all alone. We can't ever get inside another person's spirit, and see the world they do. So we are alone in that sense. The only way we have to communicate feelings is through words.
Improv plays such a huge role in finding great lines - you'll be surprised at what comes out of your mind inadvertently. A lot of times it's better than a script you've worked out ahead of time.
I always say, if you think it’s over the top then tell me where the top is first. I don’t think anyone can. But if you can tell me where the top is then I’ll tell you whether or not I’m over it.
I've shot films in locations that have seemed haunted. I shot a film in a maximum-security prison in Russia. Part of it was on a psychiatric ward - there were definitely some creepy vibes there.
If you think you're going to work with Cameron Crowe and not get into his music, you're crazy. But he doesn't force it on you. He doesn't force anything on you, which really makes things easier.
The only danger about websites, you know, is people who remember something you did or said thirty or forty years ago, and bring it up against you, so you're going for a job and you don't get it.
I still read the British papers, but I’ve never been a Royalist, ever. It’s funny, there always seems to be much more of a fascination with the Royal Family over here then there does in England.
I still read the British papers, but I've never been a Royalist, ever. It's funny, there always seems to be much more of a fascination with the Royal Family over here then there does in England.
I found at this point that effective acting wasn't what I wanted to do, that I didn't want to make effects, that I wanted, as it were, to leave an impression of a particular kind of human being.