Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I was brought up by my grandparents. So people go, oh, what was that like? That must have been hard. And you go: No, it wasn't.' It was just completely actually normal because the new norm seems to be whatever you make of it, doesn't it?
A lot of people may not know how competitive it is to play classical music, because when you think about it, the music that you're playing is music that's been here for years. And all you're trying to do is improve upon it when you play.
It used to be that you could do these nuggets of a movie and it would attach itself in terms of credibility to your work and the style of work that you did, that people would be interested and curious about you and your work as an actor.
I think the moral majority and religious right have been shrinking and having not quite as loud a voice in America, and all of a sudden people are coming to their own realizations going, 'Joe down the street is gay and he's a great guy.'
I want to work with Will Ferrell. I want to do, like, an action-comedy with him. How do I get the project for that? It's killing me. I've got all these great ideas, and the hardest thing is getting the material, the screenplay, you know.
It's not about the fish; it's not about the pollution; it's not about the climate change. It's about us and our greed and our need for growth and our inability to imagine a world that is different from the selfish world we live in today.
I think, strangely, a strip club can tell you a lot about the city you're in. If you call a strip club "Tuna's," I've gotta go in there. Usually you're not seeing the top talent around, but it's not about that. It's about the experience.
I often think if you have time to sit around the house feeling bad for yourself, you have time to tutor a child. I'm guilty of that exact thing. I will spend more time sitting around feeling bad for myself than actually helping somebody.
As a child, I was fortunate enough to be close to family members who were - and still are - great storytellers. I was a gullible country boy from Rocky Mount, Virginia, and I believed every folktale they told me, no matter how fantastic.
Technology has changed, and we need to figure out how to improve the archaic way of what makes a hit, or how to determine how many viewers are watching beyond some people with Nielsen boxes in a small percentage of homes in random areas.
I got my degree in theatre at a little school in Pennsylvania, Bloomsburg University. It was one of those situations where I went into the major because I loved it, but didn't really expect to see it as a moneymaking situation or career.
I worked on a show called 'West Wing' before. I didn't work with Aaron Sorkin, but he created the show and set the tenor of the show, which was you follow the words of the script perfectly because there's a dramaturgical thing behind it.
I was living in New York City and flat broke. My next door neighbor was an actor and he always seemed to be having more fun than I was. He convinced me to give acting a shot, but because of my shyness I was sure it would be a lost cause.
I was a member of Circle Rep; I had done a little bit of directing there. I remember that I had a vacation from 'Angels', in which I remounted a play that I had done out of town called 'Three Hotels.' That's how I spent my week vacation.
My associate director, Lisa Leguillou, is remarkable: flying around, visiting all the companies. She is truly the unsung hero of 'Wicked'. She has been by my side from day one, and she is invaluable. I frankly don't know how she does it.
I don't know how to be like a Bill Murray or a Will Ferrell, these guys who know how to make a line funny just by, I don't know, some extra-sense perception. I only know character and emotion and real acting; that's all I know how to do.
My parents allowed their two sons to be individuals. My family was a wild and wonderful place, with lots of friends and neighbors visiting and talking loud and eating loud and nobody telling the children to be quiet or putting them down.
The Sugar Frosted Nutsack is dizzyingly brilliant. Mark Leyner is a hyperkinetic shaman, who flies the banner of rum and candy and writes like a one-eyed feral bandit. His new book is supremely original, delirious and synapse-shattering.
I love his [Brad Furman] ferocious desire for perfection and his love of vitality, it feeds me, man. It feeds him and it feeds the whole crew. And he's got huge respect for talent. And that's why talent goes in and gives it 300% percent.
We were on a fairway shooting a scene in 'The Dogleg Murders' when I was asked by the cameraman if it was safe to film from where he was standing. I said, 'Yes, it'll be fine.' I then managed to slice the ball 90 degrees into the camera.
Characters can become boring. That's what's tricky about television. It goes on and on - you're playing this same character for five seasons and it gets easy to fall into just walking on the set and assuming you know how to play a scene.
After having been confined to a television series - and it's a luxury job - where you can't play anything but one particular character for nine months out of the year, it will make you insane. It didn't affect me. I got out quick enough.
Prior to 'Pirates of the Caribbean' - the first one in 2003 - I had been essentially known within the confines of Hollywood as box office poison, you know what I'm saying? You know, I basically had built a career on 20 years of failures.
When I was 14, I almost had a big green leprechaun tattooed on my forearm. Thank God I didn't - it would have been a nightmare to cover up as an actor. I went with a group of mates and, being Irish, thought a leprechaun would be perfect.
People are always like, 'Oh, 'Jurassic Park' is on...' or 'Oh, 'The River Wild' is on...' I actually haven't seen any of my movies in a long time. Being more self-aware now, and being an adult, I'm a little bit embarrassed to watch them.
[John] Hughes was well aware that to ignore the seriousness of young people is to encourage things like Columbine, so you might want to listen. And we were all pretty serious, a little bit, in high school. Some a little more than others.
To make an absolutely gross generalization, I think a lot of people feel like if you're mixed, more often than not you're quote unquote white. So if you're mixed, you embrace the mainstream culture more than the African-American culture.
I think critics tend to think that comedy is freakin' math. Like, this is the Pythagorean Theorem. They're not sophisticated enough to know that comedy is fluid, that it evolves, and these organic evolutions are what you have to embrace.
As an actor, I've been all over the map, but since I've moved to Hollywood, people tend to cast me in these more imposing characters, which is actually really fun for me. I've always been way more attracted to playing that than the hero.
Standup really is a young man's game, a single young man's game. Even when I was younger, when I wasn't single, it was hard to be on the road because you go through relationships because your girlfriend kinda got tired of you being gone.
We don't have to have blood relations in order to be brothers and sisters. Flesh and blood, those are just things that we're made of. In a real family, what matters is our hearts. We care, show concern and love. Anyone can be family too.
There is a deep camaraderie of insecurity between us actors. You rehash choices you've made among those who are close to you and inevitably bang your head against the wall when you finally figure out the scene... a day after you shot it!
Being Irish and a citizen of the world, has made me truly appreciate Irish culture, music and history. Whether you're first, second generation Irish or even with no connection to Ireland, you should visit in 2013 for a unique experience.
I believe the gift of acting is a gift from God, my oath to God, and I want to make sure on a daily basis that it is honed and deeply spiritual... I want to believe that the audience believes that my acting comes from this special place.
Well, PT Anderson sent me a script of Boogie Nights which I let lay around my house for about three months, then one day I'm cleaning my office and decided that I'd better read this before the guy calls me back. I never put it down, bro.
When I was playing Dracula I had to switch off from the reality and fall into this fantasy world. Otherwise I just couldn't cope with what I was doing. It's about switching off. It is about trying to flick a switch, which you have to do.
For one movie, I'm learning to play a violin, and I had never picked up a violin in my life. That's a big challenge. That's what I see as one of the advantages of this business. You get to do things you'd never do, in a normal lifestyle.
I never really planned a career. I've tried to avoid it. I've tried to do this stuff I felt for, the stuff I like. So, I've just been meeting these fantastic directors who've offered me a variation of different parts and different films.
I did a TV show called 'Unit 1.' It wasn't a bad experience, but yes, the first season I didn't have a good time because I was coming from Nicolas Winding Refn films where the corners were sharp and radical, but now we had round corners.
Before I really became interested in fashion, all I would look at in a fashion magazine was the ads. It only dawned on me recently that just looking at the ads really doesn't teach you everything you need to know about the fashion world.
I think people ought to realize that if you're doing investigative reporting, you're putting something on your newspaper or on your website that no one can get anywhere else, and theoretically at least, that should make people subscribe.
If I'm working in the city, then as soon as I'm home, I try to lock in on my son for a few hours. Every day. I see how important it is that he's starting to come into my world now. It's just an effort to give him that male mode of being.
It's very difficult to break into motion pictures, but it's oddly easier for directors today because of independent films and cable, who have inherited for the most part those films of substance that the studios are reluctant to finance.
There are people who appear in the magazines and I don't know who they are. I've never seen anything they've done and their careers are over already. They're famous for maybe 10 minutes. Real careers, I think, take a long time to unfold.
To recover a spiritual tradition in which creation, and the study of creation, matters would be to inaugurate new possibilities between spirituality and science that would shape the paradigms for culture, its institution, and its people.
Even as a kid, I wore J.C. Penney plain-pocket jeans because they were plain pockets. I didn't want anybody's name on my backside. I personally don't like to wear clothing that is named for somebody or has someone's likeness all over it.
I never really thought of myself as a physical comedian. But when I was a kid, I used to, you know, pretend to trip over things to make girls laugh in school and stuff like that. So I kind of learned how to fall without hurting yourself.
I can do comedy but it's a certain type. I'm not a physical comedy guy. I'm not Will Ferrell - there's just this crazy and get naked and run through the thing screaming. That's just not my style; my style is drama or - I'm not slapstick.
The joy of 'Crash' was that it was all about the work. It was my first real part. Before that, it was a line here and there, maybe a scene. 'Crash' was five scenes, a beautiful arc, a little vignette of my own. It really meant something.
My first ten years in Hollywood were really tough. I'd be coaching friends who came to me for acting advice, and then they'd make it before I did. I'd still be helping them while they were on movie sets and I had four lines on a TV show.