Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I figured out the only way to get women in high school was not to care that much. Now I realize that you have to live your life and eventually they'll be attracted to you and you'll be attracted to them and it will just happen. I think. I think.
If I was painting or writing, I wouldn't veer away from things because they seemed unsavoury to me. So as an actor, I kind of think the same way. I should do things that are different and interesting and shed light on the craziness of the world.
When you're wanting to delve into something, it's the one thing that cable television lets you achieve, in a way where you can have long form. There are no defined chapters. There are scenes, but everything's not bookended by a Chevy commercial.
I decided to have a regular childhood and not pursue [acting] until I left school, although I wrote plays, directed plays, and got involved in theatre at school. When I left school I decided that's that I was going to pursue and gave it a crack.
It was always something I knew I was capable of and from an early age my mother was involved in the film industry. She used to work at a production company. So I was exposed to a renaissance period of films in New Zealand back in the early 80's.
No acting, no production, could take the place of that moment when you come out in the dark on to the stage and the drummer plays four beats on the hi-hat and then lights and music. It just takes your breath away. No words can do what music can.
I think death is not simply the last few moments of life, death is something that runs throughout the whole of life. Each of our moments is not only the possibility of affirmation, but it's also we're saying farewell at each moment to something.
I think the whole stigma of 'black movies' is slowly being lost. When you look at movies like '12 Years A Slave,' to 'The Butler,' to 'The Best Man,' to 'Ride Along,' to even 'Think Like a Man' from last year - these movies are just good movies.
I went to school for marketing and advertising, so I have a special interest in good and funny commercials and why they work and why they're funny - which is one of the reasons I, like many people, like watching the Super Bowl, besides the game.
The next time she comes back, no matter what she says, listen to her well. If she cries, give her a handkerchief and wait until she's done crying. If she curses me, curse with her. And if by any chance she asks about me, tell her that I'm sorry.
Some of our kids are adopted and some kids are natural-born - I forget which ones are which. Family's just amazing. We think that of everything that we could do in the world... if you don't take care of your family and raise your kids, you lose.
I am terrified of flying. I am a wreck right before I get on an airplane. That, and the ocean. I can only get in there for 10 minutes, I have this strong urge to run out and I won't go back in for the rest of the day. I've always been like that.
When I started acting, my whole focus and intention was to work as a stage actor in a company where you're asked to different roles - do a comedy, do a tragedy, etc. I haven't had any reservations about jumping from one type of genre to another.
It's always different, depending on the writer and the director. A collaborator like Graham Reznick delivers a fully finished piece, perfected in every way. Other writers direct the recording session and then leave quite a bit of the work to us.
Me, I still believe in paradise. But now at least I know its not some place you can look for because its not where you go. It’s how you feel for a moment in your life when you’re a part of something and if you find that moment, it lasts forever.
In bed at night, I could be reading some book, and I'll come across a sentence that's totally unrelated to some scene I did years ago. But I'll play the scene back in my mind and think, I did that wrong - I should've opened the door more slowly.
I come from a country that lives and breathes rugby, and I didn't think there would be anywhere else in the world that could be the same. But New Zealand takes it to another dimension. It's extraordinary how much passion Kiwis have for the game.
The physicality of any character is always split up into fast, slow, high energy, low energy, what kind of personality he has. So that's where the physicality comes in. And flying through the air is just something you have to do if they ask you.
I feel like [terrorism] acts are un-Islamic. So to see that happen and somebody do that in the name of God, it just - and the religion that you practice, it just - it hurts your heart so deeply because it's such a misrepresentation of the faith.
One of the differences between HBO and other television is that they demand the same coverage that you would have in a feature film. We need to have all the shots in order to make it as rich and as stunning as it looks. We can't cut any corners.
There's a certain way you stand to give yourself authority, which gives you the texture for the part. I chose that my character hadn't been married, he'd worked his way up the chain of command. For a small cameo role, I gave it a lot of thought.
I love ensemble pieces, I love being a part of the entire tapestry of a piece, but I think character actors do have a lot more fun, and there's a versatility involved that's challenging and fun, to come up to speed and do what's required of you.
The Irish tell the story of a man who arrives at the gates of heaven and asks to be let in St. Peter says, “Of course, just show us your scars.” The man says, “I have no scars”. St. Peter says, “What a pity was there nothing worth fighting for”?
I’m a fan of the word selfish. Self. Ish. When I say I have gotten a lot more self-ish, I mean I am less concerned with what people think of me. I’m not worried about how I’m perceived. Selfish has always gotten a bad rap. You should do for you.
The challenge for me as an actor is if you become a celebrity, you don't meet strangers anymore. And strangers are where we have our anonymity. And I believe it's essential for the soul to be anonymous, especially if you're going to be an actor.
My forever mission is to take the best elements of both commercial and independent films and bring them together. I learned so much about the art of independent films and I have so much fun in commercial ones. I think that a mix of both is good.
I do a lot. I don't like to sit still. I am pretty spontaneous. I like to cook a lot. I like to eat. I like to workout, surf, read, write, and create. I am always working on a couple of projects that I always have and need to put more time into.
I don't worry about the last shot or the next shot. I concentrate. Every shot gets a clean slate. And when a shot is over, I wipe it out absolutely. Tell a joke or something. If you worry about how you looked, how well you did, you'll go insane.
After all that I'd been through, after all that I'd learned and all that I'd been given, I was going to do what I had been doing every day for the last few years now: just show up and do teh best that I could do with whatever lay in front of me.
I saw a birthday card the other day, and it said, "If you didn't know how old you were, how old would you think you were?" I started changing it in my mind right away to, "If you didn't know how sick you were, how sick would you think you were?"
I've proven I'm courageous. I'm gutsier than anybody; I've got a better imagination than anybody; I'm essentially more creative than any other actor I know, and I've proven I take risks. I don't think I need to prove anything to myself any more.
I feel really comfortable with going for the reality of the drama, but I'm not much for the comedy of it. You have to make people laugh, or you have to be true to the character in such a way that makes people laugh. It's a whole different thing.
I'll get to the force field of this hostility, why it's there, why the rage is in any of us, why the trash takes place, whether or not it's between me and a couple of hecklers in the audience or between this country and another nation, the rage.
[Sylvester Stallone] and I still touch base. I found out he was a fan of Heroes. That's kind of an amazing thing, when you look up to someone for so many years and they're actually following what you're doing. That's really a nice thing to know.
Certain things work for me, certain things don't. [Going out for drinks is] about connecting, hanging out, and having a reason to spend time together. But you don't really need any kind of reason, other than you want to spend time with somebody.
However much I might have yearned to be one of The Beautiful Ones, particularly at those ghastly school discos, where any desperate attempt to impress the opposite sex lead to at best deep humiliation, I now feel extremely blessed that I wasn't.
I do know there are a lot of people who seem to be in my corner, and that's, of course, wonderful. I'm really more interested in the nomination than in the award, because I think the nomination just puts you within a group of outstanding actors.
If you're older you want to tell stories about the pool of human life and living and to communicate, not only to your age group but to do an age group that can begin to understand, that has enough experience of life far beyond the taste of life.
I'm extremely surprised to learn that a story, which has become familiar to children through the medium of comic strips and many succeeding novels and adventure stories, should have had such an immediate and profound effect upon radio listeners.
When you're having conversations about actors, you realize these same conversations have happened about you. If you want to make a film for $5m, then you cast A, B and C, but if you want $20m, you won't be able to cast them, you need X, Y and Z.
I missed so much of the Swinging Sixties by working. From 1961 to 1969, I got up at 4.30 A.M., a car came for me at 5.30 A.M., and I was taken to our studio at Teddington or Elstree, and we filmed until I got home at 9.30 P.M., five days a week.
You look at the part in '12 Years A Slave,' you finish that script - I mean, it's a powerful story. You go, 'Man, I have to play a bad character in this.' And then you go, 'Well, do I want to play a bad character and contribute to a good story?'
Little Britain… ever since it first came on… I come here a lot, we have a lot of friends here, my wife used to work with a lot of Brits, so we were always keyed into the hot shows when they first came out. So, I fell in love with Little Britain.
You can't really appreciate anonymity until you've lost it. People say that's sour grapes, but it really isn't To be able to walk down the street without people paying attention to you is a real blessing and you lose it when you become an actor.
When I was young and growing up in New York, my parents took me to children's theater quite often - elaborate presentations of 'Goldilocks' and 'Rapunzel' for Upper East Side kids. As I grew older, they took me to adult theater, mostly musicals.
You see I don't like to be really too commercial about things but in this business you've just got to be commercial otherwise the films don't make money and you don't make films and as a long as a commodity is selling it's silly to kill it dead.
I was opposed to doing TV for a long time because I thought the quality of writing wasn't very strong, as opposed to film, but there's been a shift in term of the quality of scripts. HBO has attracted a tremendous amount of great writing talent.
Success isn't what makes you happy. It really isn't. Success is doing what makes you happy and doing good work and hopefully having a fruitful life. If I've felt like I've done good work, that makes me happy. The success part of it is all gravy.
Our society is all about focusing on the externals, "These people like me, I'm successful because of these people, they view me as being good" and we need to take that vision and instead of expanding it outwards we need to look inside ourselves.
I felt it [Shakespeare's Coriolanus] is sort of an examination of our dysfunction as a nationalistic, tribal entities. I think the world is rocking and cracking open in weird and worrying places. And I think Coriolanus, the play, reflected that.