I hate being frightened of things. I'm not someone who can say: "Oh, I'm scared of flying, I won't fly." Fear seems to creep over every part of your life so if there's something I identify as frightening to me I want to tackle it.

Some directors don't tell you that it's not your fault, so you get increasingly depressed that you're not delivering what's required, and then you discover it's not you at all, it's something in the background that's out of focus.

You won't hear me talk about my politics, you won't hear me talk about my vegetarianism, you won't hear me comment on the Iraq war. You'll only hear me talk about being gay and being an actor. I am just public on those two issues.

It's the post-literate generation that is most disturbing to a movie-maker. The explosions and the knifings. People like to go to what's hot and you can't get past a certain gross unless you involve children who go more than once.

As an audience member, I live vicariously through the characters I watch or read about. There's something very relatable about comic-book characters. They're never perfect. They're flawed people put in extraordinary circumstances.

I could never understand, when I watch romantic comedies, the notion that for some reason, unattractive or heavy people don't fall in love. If they do, it's in some odd, kooky, roundabout way - and it's not. It's exactly the same.

It's all magic to me. Country to punk rock, all of it. Chopin to Kurt Cobain. But it always all comes back to punk for me, because that was the last time, punk rock or grunge rock, was the last time that passion ruled the airwaves

No movie has ever got enough time. It doesn't matter how much money you've got, and it doesn't matter how much money you've not got. You never finish on time. You're always up against it and you're always working up until the end.

People think that [I will leave Aladdin after Tony reward], but what they don't understand is that we actually enjoy what we are doing. This wonderful company that I work for has allowed me to do other things while I'm doing this.

I probably don't make as much money as people think I make. I make more than the usual medium household. I'm one of the few middle class actors out there. The microcosm of Hollywood reflects the macrocosm of international finance.

Often in films there's more of allowing the actors to make the dialogue fit better in their own. Also, you get to a location and the geography is different, so the lines don't line up the right way, so you do have to change stuff.

I don't want to be some actor talking about how he wants to be a musician. It's something I'm really passionate about and I don't want to be spouting off at the mouth about something before it's out there and can speak for itself.

I go train, and like with Conan, I'm in leather, and with Drogo, I'm in leather or armor or something else. I'm not in my adidas sweat suit or my matching tracksuit pants to go work out. I got too busy of a day. I've got my boots.

I can walk into a room and create a good ambience. I was taught all about this back when I studied acting. One of the things they would teach you is how to send out positive signals when you enter a room. I am glad I learned this.

I kind of quit surfing when I got out of high school, but then a few years ago I started to take it up again. I'm not an expert by any means, but it's so wonderful to get out in the ocean and get a different perspective on things.

I was a very shy child. I remember being in a kindergarten open house with my mother and children saying 'Hi' to me, and I still remember feeling this way - but I don't know why - but I wouldn't even say 'Hi' back. I was that shy.

'Blackbird' is the only one I've ever wanted to redo. It just haunted me, this play. There was a sense of unfinished business because at the time we did it at Manhattan Theatre Club, there was real momentum to move it to Broadway.

My father loved me so much that he did not want me to be a laborer or anything. I don't know if it's the right thing to do - push your kids into something and then stay on them until they do it. Let them pick what they want to do.

Acting schools want to keep you in a position where they can still protect you, but in this industry no one's going to protect you except yourself. You've got to take care of yourself and you've got to get a great team around you.

[The Office] is incredible. It's slightly overwhelming because you don't think that anything you do....having anybody enjoy what you do is such a treat and so I know I've said this a hundred times but we owe it all to our writers.

I keep my kids out of the whole business entirely. Allegra and Lucas are five and six and I'm not interested in them doing any acting at all. I don't want my kids in show business. I keep them as far away from my work as possible.

I was familiar with that and 'Rio Bravo.' 'Rio Bravo' was what John Carpenter did, that brilliant move of taking a western and turning it into an urban flick. And from there you got, you know, all the cop genre movies of the time.

I don't know why 'Midsomer Murders' is so popular; I've asked this many times and I've asked the Germans particularly because I've become very fond of them, to be honest. And they say it's the irony, the sense of humour and so on.

I would love to live stream them all, so if you're in New York and you come along, you can watch Tropfest N.Y., and six weeks later you are watching Tropfest Arabia or Tropfest Australia live stream, and so they are all connected.

I just played one of the bad guys in Hercules 3D, and I had cornrows. People moved away from me in elevators, that's for sure. I wore them for about three months. After a while, they get a little gnarly, and you have to redo them.

I had just had a daughter, who was three or three-and-half years old, and I had been watching nothing but cartoons. That's really it. There was no YouTube. You're in France and you're raising a kid, so you break out the Tex Avery.

I certainly had this fascination with monsters and vampires as did Tim and whatever this darkness, this mystery, this intrigue. And then, as you get older, you recognize the erotic nature of the vampire and the idea of the undead.

Weve got nine generations of farmers in my family, in Warwickshire. And I do feel connected to being a farmers son. There was a time when I didnt, when I rebelled against it, but theres certainly that sort of work ethic within me.

I really wanted something that could make a statement about what we were doing and the life we were living in society, and the shows that push the boundaries, in those ways, are shows on cable, particularly networks like Showtime.

I'm happiest at home hanging out with the kids... Having a family has been my saving grace because I don't work back to back on anything or I'd drive myself to an early grave with guilt and worry for my family, whom I'd never see.

It must have been horrible for my parents to see me go from public school to comprehensive to detention centre to borstal. I was busy ploughing my own furrow, but I must have been a terrible worry to them, and for that I am sorry.

I guess there are people who are like, 'Here's one thing, and I'm gonna do it,' but I can't. I don't have the capacity to have that singular focus. I need to try to get a lot of things going 'cause you never know what's gonna hit.

Inevitably in my career of 35 years, I was in one turnaround circumstance after another, and I was personally put in positions of significant responsibility but without complete authority over everyone that needed to be mobilized.

With 'Transparent'. When Amazon put 'Transparent' up, along with 'Bosch' and a few other things, I watched them, and I thought it was an interesting exercise. I didn't comment on them, but I was like, 'Okay, this is kind of cool.'

The most challenging work and the best work I've ever done was in a thing I did for PBS called 'Lemon Sky', a play by Lanford Wilson. I think it's the rawest, most complex work that I've had to do, and the thing I'm most proud of.

I lived in Germany from when I was 6 until I was 10, so, of course, I played soccer. When I came back to the States, nobody played soccer, and none of the schools taught German, so I couldn't continue to excel in those categories.

It's a great thriller or mystery, but on another level it's a film about the fact that, if you only look at a person through one lens, or only believe what you're told, you can often miss the truth that is staring you in the face.

You know that thing when you break up with someone and you’re walking around the town where you both live and you’re just really hoping to see them? You know that you’re not supposed to see them, but there’s nothing you want more.

Family is very important to me because that is the footprint we perpetuate. That is, the ripple in the water when the rock first impacts the pool and it is those waves, that energy that one produces, that determines our direction.

I grew up in the Middle East. My folks have a very thick, kind of Oklahoma accent; that's where I was born. But we moved to the Middle East right after I was born, so I guess we were surrounded by English people and French people.

If you have the ability to convince somebody of something that you don't necessarily think is the case, it's a valuable asset. Not that I'm, like, a pathological liar, but we spend most of the day not fully being honest, you know?

People ask me if I ever feel outside the Hollywood loop, and I never do, because both of us do a lot of theatre, so it's great for New York and it's also half-way between Europe and the west coast, so it's the best of both worlds.

My favorite group growing up was 'The Hobbit.' It was the first book I actually finished. One of those adventure things that takes you to that land and it will forever hold a special place in my heart. I am not a huge book reader.

Sometimes when you get on a new movie you kind of how to figure out the way other people work and it can be like being the new kid in high school where you're just trying to find out where your place is on the movie or on the set.

Being raised Muslim, we had to get up at the crack of dawn to pray. There was no sleeping in, no getting up Saturday morning to watch cartoons because there was no TV in the house. But you got up and you worked, cleaned the house.

The only person who had any control was Jonathan Harris. His character was so flamboyant that he was able to make things happen. My character was fairly one-dimensional, so I had my relationship with Dr. Smith and with the family.

The great thing I like about the sci-fi genre is there's a lot of different latitude for a lot of different kinds of behavior. You can be a very larger-than-life villain, or a very naturalistic villain, and all of it seems to fit.

My own mother fought to make herself more than a possession; she lived her life as a mother who chose when she would have children, and a wife who could earn a living if she so chose. I want my daughters to enjoy that same choice.

I don't really judge. To each his own. You like what you like. If you want someone who's big-boned and you like that, ain't nothing wrong with having a little extra meat on their. If you like them thin-boned, then that's okay too.

I know some people who are like, 'I love fitness,' and I feel like if you have to say that, you're still in the romance stage. I'm in the stage where I've been married to it for 60 years, and I don't think I'll ever get a divorce.

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