Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm interested in playing Rasputin at some point. I find him such a fascinating character and a fascinating period in Russian history. Either Rasputin or Jesus. I think I have more of a chance to play Rasputin.
I wonder if games are maybe a terminus for ideas. Things can be books or movies or operas or plays, but once they're a game, that's where they should end. Things shouldn't start as games and be taken to movies.
I'm not an intellectual in any sense, I have constraints of erudition. I'm not able to deal with things outside my ken, and that makes me irritable. I'm irritable about the fact that I never went to university.
There were always moments where I'd say, 'What else can I do with my life?' But when I was 30 years old and discovered I could write - I wrote 'Black Cloud' in six weeks - it opened up a whole new world for me.
I've always treated money with respect, but I don't really think about money - I try to avoid it, because I don't like what money does to people. I find if you get too much money involved, people get corrupted.
The first thing you should know about me is when I was three years old my mother left me and my father. And that was traumatic obviously for my father - he suffered a nervous breakdown at that time in his life.
Curiously, directing my own films have made me more tolerant and patient. I've always been an extremely impatient actor. Waiting around drove me nuts. But now I'm much more sympathetic to a director's struggle.
One of the conventions that I always liked was Doctor Zhivago, where everything that's written on the screen is in Russian but everyone speaks English. That seemed to me to be quite a good convention to follow.
My career has suddenly started to be the one that I'd always wanted, not in terms of level of success, but in terms of - and this is what I've been banging on about - playing different parts in different media.
American culture is one that is so easily in denial. We have such a strange dichotomy, so hypocritical. The truth can be blaring in neon letters but our culture will find a reason not to hear what the truth is.
I think drag is universal, no matter who does it. I mean, yeah, I am homosexual, but I think everybody likes to toy with their image. I love those guys. I love Milton Berle and Flip Wilson and all those people.
I have a friend that is a WWII buff, and we sat and talked a lot about stuff like the war and the reasons behind it, and you now it's all in the uniform. Once you're in it, it usually does all the work for you.
I was into sports in high school, but I got kicked out of Richmond High at 17, so I never graduated. However, I still get invites to the class reunions... I don't know that I want to see how everyone looks now.
I think the people that most often cross a line are comedians. I think they relish that, and take pride in that on some level - at least, from what little I've seen and understand about people that do stand-up.
The Pre-Raphaelites, while very bothered by what the establishment thought of them, also utterly rebelled against it. In everything - social, sexual, emotional - they were out on a limb, pushing the boundaries.
I got an agent when I needed one, when I had a contract negotiation for the first time. I was doing the Second City E.T.C., and I got invited to audition for the last season, it turns out, of 'In Living Color.'
There's a thing called game, and when you're out and you're trying to push up on a female and you're going, "Yo, I want to be your knight in shining armor," chances are you're going to get a drink on your face.
From what I hear, everyone who does a Marvel movie gets a three-picture deal. I'll be Sam Jackson's stand-in. I'll do eight pictures for Marvel, and then I'll just do indies. Marvel can pay for my indie career.
We never dealt with satire or suggestive material. Although some of our films were broad parodies or burlesques of popular dramatic themes, there was no conscious attempt at being either sarcastic or offensive.
I've always found, when I was younger, that the older guys - the guys who weren't of my generation but were 20, 30 years older than me - were the cool guys. I always wanted to be around adults when I was young.
I don't know how other people perceive the lives of actors, but my life is fairly ordinary. I go to work, I come home, I put my kids to bed. If I'm home in time for dinner, I have dinner, and then it's bedtime.
I just don't identify myself with a place. I just don't get it. Like, why am I cheering for this town? Towns are good and bad but they don't have principles, constitutions. You wouldn't go to war for your town.
My dad was the chaplain at Mankato State University, and my mom worked in the bookstore. We lived just off-campus. Then we moved to the suburbs of Minneapolis, to New Hope, which is where I went to high school.
Prior to 'Tokyo Drift,' the iconic perception of Asians in Hollywood films has been either the Kung Fu guy, the Yakuza guy or some technical genius. It used to be such a joke, to be laughed at rather than with.
Franchises mean that you're tied in. That's a lovely feeling of comfort to the whole thing. From a business perspective, it really keeps you current and lets you go and do other smaller, more pedestrian things.
I was three. My father in jest said that he'd tell the doctor to give me a shot if I didn't behave. Good heavens, I have a mental picture of the living room and the doctor approaching the door. I was terrified.
Baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.
Kurt [Sutter] is one of the few showrunners that actually sits down and talks to the actor alone, and then with all of the other writers, and basically tells you what he has in mind and what's going to go down.
I've lived with myself for a very long time, so I'm aware of what I look like. I'm under no false pretense that I'm a stunner, so if somebody comes up and says something about my physical appearance, it's okay.
My first job in L.A. was actually playing an employee in a Best Buy commercial, but I played a bad employee at another store. I also worked at a commercial casting company running cameras and session directing.
Well, I think people don't recognise my face because I'm so much older now, but it is astonishing that people can recognise a voice. I do sometimes get recognised, and indeed a lot of people do come and see me.
I've started a little independent record label called 'Six String Productions' and recorded a couple of tunes, and I hope to do some more with some future artists next year. It's a real passion project of mine.
I think online dating is a way of procuring people. Like Facebook and Myspace, it's the way that people connect now and procure small children and sometimes dodgy relationships. I don't think it's very healthy.
The language of digital communication is a language we don't understand in a way. People say the internet is like the Wild West in that it's lawless and we haven't worked out how to make it structured or moral.
I am truly multi-racial. I never knew my biological father. I've always had less information than I would have liked to have had. All I know from my mother is that I have connections to many different cultures.
I really believe that when you're playing a character that everything is contained in the script. If I'm pulling from things from my own life, then I think I'm being disingenuous to the character and the story.
I always wanted to be a journeyman actor. I wanted to be able to do comedy and drama, classical and contemporary. I like to do film and theater. And I pride myself on that diversity of being a journeyman actor.
I think it's necessary when you're dealing with a dark show that has explosion and violence to have defined moments of lightness and humor, even romance. It's important, and it deepens the character, of course.
I have some cops in my family. I understand the predicament that they're in. Sometimes they go into it just to pay the bills or because they don't have other choices, or sometimes they just want to get the gun.
Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else, but when it happens to you, why it seems to lose some of its Humor, and if it keeps on happening, why the entire laughter kinder Fades out of it.
I keep going because I doubt myself. It drives me to be better. I've learned that the mastery of self-doubt is the key to success. It's like being animated by the love of a woman - the need to be worthy of her.
There's a joy and a pain about directing where the dreams you have are becoming concrete but the attention to detail, the need for time is such that it's overwhelming at times, and the stream of responsibility.
It's funny, because I've never thought of myself as a Hispanic actor, like in 'American Gangster,' I'm playing an Italian. I've always been fortunate enough to have been allowed to play all these diverse roles.
When I was told they wanted the show to be about doctors, I was a bit reluctant to sign on, you know? I thought, why have a show about doctors when we could have a show about the real heroes, you know, like me?
Yeah, I played with LEGOs. We had LEGOs, Lincoln Logs, and Playmobil, and they all occupied the same space. I guess that's fairly common. I'm saying this as if it's a bizarre phenomenon that we had a toy chest.
I think somewhere in the '90s, it started to shift, and you started to see a lot of film and television actors doing theater, and producers using the notoriety of the film and television actors to sell tickets.
For an actor, for me, I love being able to tap into just heavy emotions. I don't need to be balling in every scene, but I just love to feel different emotions when heading to set. It's a lot of fun to play with.
I think 'Tap Dogs' has lasted so long because people have a natural interest in tap dancing. This form of dancing can't be dated, it's such an intriguing form of dance because the feet are also an an instrument.
People do more important jobs than acting in film that should be recognised, but for some reason it's big money, so people are elevated in status. If I was a bus driver, I'm sure you wouldn't be interviewing me.
I was always interested in it when I was younger, but it was when I was at university, getting together with other like-minded theatrically inclined types, that I admitted to myself that I wanted to be an actor.