Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When you had just three and then four channels, I could always find something that was watchable because the standard of TV was much higher. In those days, they had so much more money to put into so many less programmes.
I don't think I would ever have taken on professional acting roles if I hadn't had the ability to fly. I had quite low self-esteem, and it gave me the self-confidence to believe I could do anything that I put my mind to.
I'd had a relationship with a French girl, a Japanese girl, an American girl, a Filippina and she was there all the time - a Lancashire girl. I thought: 'It's a Lancashire girl I was looking for. Why didn't I realize it?
It's as predictable as the sun rising in the morning. Every time Barack Obama's poll numbers rise you can be certain he's done something else to weaken the country. He's empowered a base that loathes American excellence.
I never danced a step in my life so naturally. My first motion picture was a musical, and Bob Fosse was the choreographer. I didn't exactly dance for Fosse, I just did the best that I could to do what he taught us to do.
Whatever blocks you encounter, you have learned that there is a way over, around or through them. It is not those obstacles that inhibit your progress but your confidence, and will to break the inertia of fear and doubt.
Part of my daily regime is my glucosamine and, of course, a multitude of multivitamins. Branched-chain amino acids, glutamine, of course protein. I have one protein shake a day, and that is immediately after my training.
I've been through natural disasters. I lived down in Miami and was down there for Hurricane Andrew which was a Category 5. There were members of my family that thought they were going to die. Everyone was in the bathtub.
Nowadays you really have to pump out that blockbuster in order to have the luxury of getting a body of work, and that's sad because the work suffers. Today everything is based on money. The older actors, they inspire me.
I like being from a city that is not entrenched in show business. When you're in New York City or Los Angeles, even if you're not dealing with show business, there's still this sense that it's the center of the universe.
I've worked with some actors who have such thick skins and think they are so extraordinary. I'll think, 'Have you stopped learning?' They stop listening to directors or other actors and do the same thing again and again.
Suddenly I was the man who got the part that every actor in the English language was trying to get. I was really scared. I had talked the talk, and now I had to walk the walk. For three days, I couldn't answer the phone.
I'm basically a writer, it's who I am. I direct and I like theatre directing very much. But I've done 17 movies, they don't say 'Let's get Garry, he'll make a helicopter shot,' they say 'Get Garry, he'll fix the script.'
I did not want to put myself on the line, as an Australian playing Britains greatest comic actor. The fans of Sellers are obsessive, possessive - and aggressive. I did not want to risk their anger - or my own reputation.
Whatever anybody believes as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else, it's fair enough, and works, and I think, is real, and matters. I don't happen to have those beliefs, as much, you know, I don't believe in those things.
By that point, I had started taking singing lessons. And after the first session, I mean, I was surprised that the windows didn't shatter. And after the third session, I really didn't know where this voice had come from.
I do give a great deal of forethought and zone in on character and all sorts of things like that. Never before have I just stuffed something away in the back cupboard of my brain because it was just such a crazy concept.
Cher's great, she's incredible. She is an enormous, enormous star, who goes anywhere and crowds follow her...and yet she's a disciplined actress and she's down to Earth and cool. I can't say enough good things about her.
I remember my parents taking me to see 'The Exorcist' in theaters when I was really young. They're Cuban and didn't really speak English, so I don't think they got that it was a movie about a girl possessed by the devil.
The weird thing is when you're a gay guy my age, I spent so much of my life just thinking I was probably never going to date anyone, so now just thinking, "all right, settle down and have a child" seems ridiculous to me.
I think most actors would say some of the most fun roles are when you're evil, and that's been really exciting to be the bad guy in a lot of scenarios. Because when you're 12, you don't get to play the villain too often.
My first few films were institutional comedies, and you're on pretty safe ground when you're dealing with an institution that vast numbers of people have experienced: college, summer camp, the military, the country club.
At which point should we let go and do what we want to do, and when should we submit to rules? Coming to terms with our true natures and who we really are has always been a fascination to humans. I know it fascinates me.
And I think that, of course, there is some dysfunction of needing to be liked or noticed or to feel part of things, something going on there for most actors. For some there's not and I think they really struggle with it.
If you look at all different facets, where does it come from? Education. It comes from empowerment of young people. Because the bureaucracies that are in place now, they're not going to change, they're not going to stop.
As soon as me and Willow started releasing music, that's one thing that the whole world took away is, okay, they unlocked another step of honesty. If these guys can be honest about everything, then we can be more honest.
In Montreal, there is a friend of mine at school who is a jazz pianist with an amazing voice, and we sort of have this fusion/soul/R&B/folk music kind of thing. We've been keeping it low-key and opening for some friends.
Nobody can be whatever they want to be. No kid can do whatever they want to do. It's a total lie. But they have the right to try and do whatever they want to do. That's their right, to aim to do whatever they want to do.
I wanted to acknowledge my U.S. heritage and to belong to it more closely. Having said that, I am certainly British by formation and education and readily think of London as home. I had never lived in the U.S. till 2007.
Acting is not terribly important work, and I have always felt a bit of guilt about pursuing something that is so selfish. I love doing it, but it is never something that feels like it's going to change or save the world.
With acting, you do want to get every job, and you're trying to get every audition, but then you reach a certain stage where you start to kind of gravitate toward the stories and the people that have a similar heartbeat.
Imagine the situation between Israel and Palestine. It's such a big mess. You can be on one side or the other. But what's clear is that there's an urgent need for a solution there and that's been dragging on for so long.
I think that society is aspiring towards racial indifference, but the reality of life is not that. And so when you meet someone, you can see their race - it's right there on their face - and I feel like it's interesting.
Ultimately, in regular television, you've got seven or eight executives and maybe 50 people in the room with dials who are deciding whether a show goes - and it's not a great way, because we're making mass entertainment.
I always wanted to do films. I'd gone to New York early in 1976 and did a lot of theater, but I really wanted to chase the paths of people like Pacino and Lemmon and those guys. Alan Arkin. Film was where I wanted to go.
I had done a fair bit of traveling during the holidays in my school days with my guitar and discovered that I could live on it. Admittedly, I traveled with a sleeping bag but I could always find somewhere to lay my head.
In terms of people who we call heroes - and I don't tend to like that term, and firefighters don't consider themselves heroes - but if you look at their job description, they are. Their job is to straight up save people.
The character is what trips you up - the thing of, "I'm going to get so dark in this character that I'm going to get lost in a character." You can't get lost in a character. You can only think you're lost in a character.
It's just odd that something as essential in life as sex has been flattened out in mainstream cinema - and in art cinema. Even in art movies, sex always seems to be treated negatively. Why does it always end in disaster?
I've found that one's language abilities, especially for Korean kids like me, get frozen at the age you immigrated. So I've always associated Korea with being a child and being infantilized through my inability to speak.
I remember once acting really cool on a bus with this girl named Stephanie. When I got home, I realized that I had a really big zit on my forehead. If you have acne problems, you really shouldn't be acting like Don Juan.
I probably have more female friends than any man I've ever met. What I like about them is that almost always they're generally mentally tougher, and they're better listeners, and they're more capable of surviving things.
From a certain age, I sort of accepted myself for what I was. And although to other people it was like nothing ever goes right, I had a really nice attitude that I'd inherited from my parents, and especially from my dad.
It was very amusing to do 'GI Joe: Retaliation' scenes with Bruce Willis, who spends months rewriting his dialogue and then turns up and doesn't say it. Part of the time, he doesn't say anything, but mumbles and mutters.
I don't think you necessarily have to be the most perfected performer, in order to express your feelings. It's really those feelings that an audience connects with, I think, at least as much as perfected technical skill.
Guys think of love as a feeling, which means that if you do something wrong you can still love somebody. So guys are constantly screwing up and then saying, "But I love you!" And girls have a different standard for love.
If everything is going well in my life then I start to read the papers more and I start to worry about everything I can't deal with. They say wisdom is knowing what you can fix and what you can't change. I'm very unwise.
They put their feelers out for all the names and then they'll cast you up to the point a name steps up, and then it doesn't matter how much they love you, there's a certain marketing value on that name, and there you go.
I love that there are so many 'Veronica Mars' fans. I was not a regular on the show. I was lucky enough to just come on. I loved the character. But, I never really realized the rabid fans that it had. I just didn't know.
Genuinely love doing standup and I'm a comedian first, so for me what makes my standup special is the fact that I don't have to adapt or adjust. I am who I am. I appeal to everyone, hence in the movie doing a world tour.