Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
No one has ever mistaken me for someone who should be giving fashion advice, but I will say I'm always impressed by women who have kind of figured out their own style and comfort. That's what I find attractive.
It's a joy to be up close to Derek Jacobi's work. Alas, we haven't worked very much, over the years, since we were at university together, but I don't think I've missed many of his great shows and performances.
Before 'Dancing with the Stars,' I'd directed a short called 'Man vs. Monday' that I sent out to all the festivals just to show I can direct and produce. It was also a template to launch a movie or a TV series.
I had already played a lead on Broadway before I ever did a film. I had had three, four seasons of stock with good, fat parts, good supporting and leading parts. And I had done, oh, God, over 400 live TV shows.
What world am I living in?' Aren't movies made to have something to say? Why make a movie if you don't have something to say? What are you doing it for? Are you doing it because you want to make a lot of money?
I'm sort of a Walter Mitty. I got fewer brain cells than most people, so when I got friendly with cowboys, I started rodeoing. When I was calf-roping, there was something about the dirt that made me feel clean.
I always have a beard between jobs. I just let it grow until they pay me to shave it. People are quite surprised it's ginger. Sometimes they ask me if dye my hair and I always say 'Wow, no!' I'm 'trans-ginger.'
Baltimore breeds a really specific type of weirdo. Animal Collective is from Baltimore. Dan Deacon, John Waters. There's a through line of weirdness and a hard edge that I see when I meet people from that area.
The way I look at the world, if you can't find a way to get something good out of the experience, then you have lived an unhappy life. All the actors I have worked with, superstars or otherwise, I have enjoyed.
I'd known plenty of people who'd worked with Cillian [Murphy], and he was one of those people I'd only heard good things about. It's pleasing when it works like this. As Cillian said, it's not always like that.
I'm bad on Valentine's Day, but even worse on Christmas. I go shopping at nine o'clock on December 24th every year. Nobody else is there. I'm in Toys'R'Us all by myself. I get there five minutes before closing.
It's odd, because 'Mad Men' was the first long-form TV thing I ever did. I'd done loads of independent movies, but after that, it was 'TV actor.' You go, 'When did that happen? Everything else has been erased?'
It was a real honor to be able to work with someone like that that I've been watching since I was a kid. I mean, to play his brother left some people scratching their heads but something about it really worked.
My father was a director and producer, so when I was a little kid, he would take me to movies and show me what's good and what's not good and why, and often that would take me to a conversation about directing.
I can't tell you too much about it because I'm not even meant to tell you that I'm in it. In fact, I might never work again now that I've been talking to you. I'm not in it for very long, let's put it that way.
As actors, we have that in common that we go for slightly out-of-the-box or genre stuff. They're great when they work, but they don't always work. Genre stuff is really hard to pull off, as any fans of it know.
I have this problem with violence. I've only done one movie in almost 20 years where I killed people. It's called Perdita Durango. It's a Spanish movie. I'm very proud of the movie, but I felt weird doing that.
As you become famous you lose some of your anonymity, which is wonderful for an actor to have because you can observe people and also people don't have such a strong sense of who you are and that sort of thing.
I was very shy when I was younger. But I did have a terrible temperament. I would get angry very quickly, but the rest of the time I was this big goofball, playing the drums in a band and making out with girls.
Where I feel something that I had written was misinterpreted in a way that made people feel bad, that is absolutely horrifying to me. I feel so embarrassed and I feel ashamed that I should make people feel bad.
In middle school, I played quarterback. I was at a tiny school, so you played offense and defense - I played linebacker, and in high school I stopped playing around my sophomore year because of my acting stuff.
I love acting. I love play-acting. I love pretending. I love telling stories so whether they be comedic or serious or whatever, it doesn't really matter to me. I enjoy telling a good story. I have it all in me.
I left 'L.A. Law' after five years when my contract was up because I felt I had done all I could do with the character. I didn't walk off the show with a three-picture deal to pursue this wonderful film career.
In most films - especially in regards to the protagonist - really from the get-go they set up some scenario that endears that character to the audience. Or imbues him with some nobility or heroism or something.
I think the great thing about characters is the ways that they can be surprising. I mean, sometimes you think you've got a lock on a personality, even just in life, and then they'll shock you by their behavior.
There are problems in doing television that have been plaguing me for years. I really like to have a lot of time, to rehearse and make things as good as they can be, but television often doesn't allow for that.
If we weren't doing remakes, nobody would know who Shakespeare was. I'm not saying that RoboCop is Shakespeare, but it's a way we're retelling. That's what we do as human beings. We retell our favorite stories.
Somehow that doesn't feel like a natural human thing to do, to go to those dark places, you have to kind of force yourself to do that. And comedy, it's like you're excited to get there in the morning every day.
I actually came out the year that AIDS hit the front pages. So there was this mixed feeling about it - excitement that life's finally begun, but it was completely tied up with mortality and danger and politics.
I've seen things change and people forget: the history of Berlin, the history of queer struggle, the history of AIDS, the history of New York changing from an artistic powerhouse to more of a financial one now.
I remember being afraid of doing drag when I was younger because I didn't really like my feminine side - most gay guys at some point are told that that's the worst part of you, so that becomes a negative thing.
When you see a culture where the intellectual architects of the invasion are not shamed for their behavior but rewarded within the mainstream media culture, black comedy, satire, absurdism is the only response.
I did a lot of community theatre and met a manager that worked out of Philadelphia, and she started sending me up to New York for auditions, and I got the part in a play at Manhattan Theatre Club when I was 15.
When people ask if I'm going to be sad that 'The Office' is over, they don't even understand the depth of that question for me. It's an era of my life. No one would have known my name if it wasn't for the show.
And then I went to visit my sister in the states and all of a sudden it was just like, it's like... it's like the movie Wizard of Oz when all of a sudden it changes from Black and White to glorious Technicolor.
People get up, they go to work, they have their lives, but you'll never see the headlines say, 'Six billion people got along rather well today.' You'll have the headline about the 30 people who shot each other.
It's nice when you're nervous and everybody's like, "Yeah, you should be nervous." Because a lot of times you're anxious and people say, "Relax. Shut up." And that just feels like, Well, I guess I'm also crazy.
I do feel fortunate in that I am probably allowed more often to be a character actor then most actors are allowed to be, and I don't take that lightly or superficially at all. I mean, I really do appreciate it.
I was always a fan of the great old spaghetti Westerns, the Sergio Leone films. But the one that always sticks with me, that I just thought was brilliant and perfect is "Cat Ballou." Lee Marvin in "Cat Ballou."
My mother asks when I will do some theatre, and there is something about getting your 15 minute call. That is what you become an actor for - performing in front of people and getting the love from the audience.
I left 'Spring Awakening,' and within a month of leaving the show, I came out to my parents and to my friends and broke up with my boyfriend and moved into an apartment of my own and completely changed my life.
When our minds as people normally starts to wrap around things, we start to attach all these ideas to it that really aren't that necessary to the core of it, if you just experience it and kind of go through it.
I arrived in Los Angeles on the Monday, had a call from my agent to say they wanted to see me for 'Dallas,' made an audition tape at my friend's house in L.A. the same day, and had the job the following Monday.
If I'm not moved by what happens at the end of this play, then I've completely failed, and so has the play, and so has our production. And if that's the case then there really isn't any reason to want to do it.
There are many nations that have perfected a particular room. You know, you have the French drawing-room, the Austrian ball room, the German dining room, and I think the library is a room the English get right.
I did an internship in the Silicon Valley during the Internet boom. I couldn't imagine sitting in a cubicle the rest of my life, so I gave acting a try. I would have been happy doing theater and making nothing.
I like all the clichés. I mean, I love someone who lives in Los Angeles - so that's a big draw. But I love the weather. It does feel like a slightly healthier lifestyle, being able to hike and do all that crap.
I have definitely been curious and involved in the process; even as a young actor. I was always looking at where the camera was, what story it was telling. And as my experience grew, I wanted to know even more.
I think that short films often contain an originality, a creative freedom, an energy and an invention that is inspiring and entertaining. I think they are, as Shakespeare put it, a good deed in a naughty world.
As an actor, it's a very strange adjustment to start playing the father. I was used to playing a kid my whole life, and then all of a sudden, it's like, boom. I guess when I let my hair go grey, things changed.