Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When you're used to being at a point where you're deadlifting close to 600 pounds, getting to be 5.5 percent body fat and seeing veins in places you shouldn't see them, it kind of skews your understanding of what is normal and OK.
If a show is good, it helps people learn about themselves, in some way and in some function. Whatever the genre is, if it's executed well, audiences grow and learn from it, and that's where their passion and enthusiasm comes from.
What is important, I think, is to reach as many people as you can and do it as well as you can. Reach them and inspire them or amuse them, or maybe in some odd moments help them to discover something they hadn't thought of before.
What happened when 'Sweetback' made all that money, the studios were in a very difficult position. They wanted the money, but they didn't the message. This marked the advent of the caricatures which became known as blaxploitation.
I didn't get to go to prom; I was filming a death scene on my prom night. But I got to go to all the homecomings, and even the winter formals I got to go to, but the only thing I missed was the prom, but everything else was great.
Whether it's a lower or higher budget project, a TV show or a film, the words on the page are the same to me and I approach the work in the same way. My job is to lift the character from the page, whether it's a TV or film script.
I like causing trouble. It's the teddy boy in me. I used to be a teddy boy. Feeling slightly inferior and wanting to cause a bit of bother and get some action going on in the room rather than get bored stiff. Does that make sense?
I think a villain who starts his morning looking in the mirror, wringing his hands, and going, 'How can I be evil today?' is not an interesting villain. An interesting villain is a person who you understand on some level, I think.
Playing is no challenge; every time that you get a role you get to go play with other people in the sandbox and so there is no challenge, real challenge. The challenge, the major challenge is getting the work, finding the sandbox.
I've been very fortunate to go from interesting chapter to interesting chapter. I've always enjoyed the process and always enjoyed working more really than the end result of what it achieves. I'm more interested in doing the work.
I won't read a new graphic comic novel until the writer has completed the entire series. I got burned a few times when I got turned on to a book, plowed through it only to find out the author was in the middle of writing the next.
Viggo Mortensen had the biggest impact on me in terms of approach, dedication, intention, and artistic outlook, and I'm nowhere close to how good he is as an artist, and I wouldn't even put myself in the same category as an actor.
When I was filming, I imagined that Legolas was a meditative character who was very thoughtful and had a certain amount of depth to him. I started working on trying to find this focus that Legolas has, which wasn't really like me.
Acting is a hard way to make a living, and there's a kind of dark, somewhat seedy side to the whole aspect of fame and celebrity that's not really something I would want for my child - or want him to want, if that makes any sense.
I've actually become much, much dumber through being married and having these children. I find that I'm not half as sharp that I once was. I can't even help them with their 4th and 5th grade vocabulary and math work at this point.
I just want to do as many different genres as I can. I think that's part of it... to not get pigeon-holed because if one of them breaks out and becomes a big hit then typically people want to keep putting you in that kind of role.
The public may think I'm weird. They may think I'm crazy or anything that anyone wants to think about me. That's all fine. As long as one of the things you're not thinking about me is that I'm a pedophile. Because that's not true.
I never had an imaginary friend, just imaginary circumstances. I was so into the Indiana Jones movies, and I would constantly reenact circumstances. I broke my left arm three times, two of which were me trying to be Indiana Jones.
I didn't set out to make this kind of picture. It just came my way. But its been going on for me for 16 years now and its wonderful for an actor to work consistently. There seems to be an insatiable audience for this type of film.
Woody Allen, that was a dream come true, although I never really talked to him. Auditioning was fun, because you don't really hear much about the script. They just said, "They want a Woody Allen type," so of course I got the call.
Plays are a pretty big commitment. It takes a minimum of three months out of your life, really. And if you have family or kids, then at least during the rehearsal period for five or six weeks, you kind of say goodbye to everybody.
I think I would have drank myself to death, literally, if I didn't just stop, once and for all when I did. I am not ever going to preach to anyone about drugs or drinking. But, for me, when they were around, I had no self control.
There are characters in movies who I call 'film characters.' They don't exist in real life. They exist to play out a scenario. They can be in fantastic films, but they are not real characters; what happens to them is not lifelike.
When you're acting, you're subjective; when you're a director, you're more objective.You're kind of watching from the outside and helping others, and therefore I learn my mistakes through others, and also my assets through others.
If I'm directing actors, I learn about acting that way. If I'm acting, I learn about directing that way. Producing is just something that's come about because there's projects I find interesting that I would like to help get done.
When I found acting, it was my saving grace - still is. That I get paid to do it is remarkable. That I get to meet people like Salma Hayek - one of the most beautiful women I know, with the most magnificent energy - is phenomenal.
When I got the invitation to be part of 'The Ghost' or 'The Ghost Writer,' as it's now known, from Mr. Roman Polanski, my interest level was very piqued. I was very excited and pleased to get such an offer from Mr. Roman Polanski.
I love being an actor, and I don't want to be a spokesman for anything, I don't want to do anything crazy or fancy like that. I just love playing characters and getting paid for it, and that's what I want to do till the day I die.
I always loved Hanks in 'Philadelphia' and 'Forrest Gump' and watching how versatile he was. That shaped my impression of what someone was able to do. Of course, everything De Niro came up with was always something I was taken by.
There's a show on Comedy Central that I love called 'Nathan for You,' which is kind of a reality show, almost a prank show, where this guy Nathan Fielder goes around helping struggling businesses. He's so hilarious and so awkward.
Regis can do anything these young punks can do. I fit right in there with my Fox people. They want Regis to dance, Regis will dance. They want Regis to lift weights with them, Regis will lift weights with them. Whatever they want!
So what's so enticing about doing a play is that you get to do that thing that got you into acting in the first place... There's a real attraction to being able to play, to just play. And that's something that theater affords you.
I grew up with the idea that someone might hate you if they knew what religion you were; being afraid to open my mouth because my accent might make people think something about me. Or even if they didn't, would they understand me?
The fashion world is much more ephemeral than the film industry and moves at a faster pace, and it's got even more frenetic since the Nineties; more paparazzi hanging about and it seems to me there are even more fashion magazines.
Not only did God deliver me from the bondage of alcoholism, he also blessed my family financially because of my commitment to honor what he had done for me and for not doing what I believed could possibly be destructive to others.
I turned down a lot of things - some very lucrative - because I could afford to at that time. That didn't lead to a happy place. I was happy to spend time with my family, get to know my daughter, who was born during The West Wing.
It's become this really odd thing where even some of the folks who build the things that we wear for entertainment are contacted by DARPA-esque companies who are saying, "Yeah, we're really doing that, and we want to talk to you."
You know, Hollywood sometimes tends to patronize the interior of the United States. As Horton Foote used to say, the great Texas playwright, that a lot of people from New York don't know what goes on beyond the South Jersey Shore.
I want to know everything there is to know about Lewis and Clark. And I want to do the Sunday crossword in less than an hour. I want to be the best dad in the world. I want to play Richard II, and I want to win another Tony award.
The essential truth is that sometimes you're worried that they'll find out it's a fluke, that you don't really have it. You've lost the muse or - the worst dread - you never had it at all. I went through all that madness early on.
From an over-arching point-of-view, in war there is heroism on both sides. Obviously, the victor gets the spoils, the victor gets to write history, but there's heroism and compassion on both sides, and to me that's very important.
Muscles. We're talking about muscles? They're like pets, basically, and they're not worth it. They're just not worth it. You have to feed them all the time and take care of them, and if you don't, they just go away. They run away.
Any acting is a stretch of the imagination. That's your job. Acting is truth in imaginary circumstances. Acting with green screen or a motion capture stage, you're striving for absolute truth in absolutely imaginary circumstances.
I turned to my mom and said, Im going to be a martial arts movie star. She didnt believe me, and neither did my dad. They both thought I would grow out of it. That it was a phase. I decided then I was going to do it or die trying.
I think the longer a sitcom is on the air, by necessity, the dumber the characters have to get: otherwise, they would be learning and growing, and they won't be funny, so they have to get more and more extremely whatever they are.
So much of comedy is feeling comfortable with the point of view coming at you. So I understand it. There's people who I find hilarious now, but the first couple of times I saw 'em, I was like "What is this? I don't get it at all."
I think the challenge in hour television or half-hour television is that the more it's around, certainly on commercial television, the less time you have to tell stories these days, because the more commercials they're putting in.
I love the way Damon Lindelof writes. It's almost like he was channeling me and he had my voice, even though the territory that those lines cover is unpredictable, and goes from raw emotion to laugh out loud funny but always true.
You have to pay attention to the moments when you've felt on top on the world. I remember the first time I was on stage, I was doing 'West Side Story,' I was 17 and this woman was crying because she liked what I was doing so much.
You could say Shakespeare is so extraordinary precisely because he was so ordinary. He had all the usual anxieties and understandings of what it is to have children, lose children, get married, struggle to make a living and so on.