Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My job was basically to look at a good friend completely naked and rub lotion on her back. I was naked too, but I got to put a towel on almost immediately. So I was like, "Well, this is going to be embarrassing, but it's also going to be kinda awesome."
See, what you're meant to do when you have a mid-life crisis is buy a fast car, aren't you? Well, I've always had fast cars. It's not that. It's the fear that you're past your best. It's the fear that the stuff you've done in the past is your best work.
I just finished my 62nd or my 63rd movie here, and you know, I do good ones, I do bad ones, I do big parts, I do small parts, I do cameos - but I've allowed myself a pat on the back, because I realized that I've been working in Hollywood now since 1973.
We're dealing with fundamentalists... the Amish are fundamentalists, but they don't try and hijack a carriage at needlepoint. And, if you're ever in Amish country and you see a man with his hand buried in a horse's ass, that's a mechanic. Remember that.
Our pool is outdoors, but it's heated, and I've got one of those machines that produces waves you have to swim against; like a jogging treadmill, really, only it's in water. Basically, it means you can have a small pool, swim for miles, and get nowhere.
Sport for me is about inspiring kids. Here's the rules, here's the play area, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. This is all about teaching kids how to approach life. If we're not playing sport to benefit kids, I'm not really sure why we play sport.
It just seems like a religion that is perfect for people who feel like they need a grounding, who feels that the world has run off on them. I've discussed this with Scientologists, and they don't disagree. So, for a certain type of person, that's great.
I have been incredibly fortunate to be able to work with good directors and for me it's not really a plan each time I'm on a set with one of them; I think about what I can learn from them because I'm very aware that my filmmaking skills are very modest.
The spirit that America has, the American industry creativity it has where anything is possible. Three idealistic Australians bringing in new ideas and being able to make the damn comic books that they've always dreamed about, it's kind of a cool thing.
My dad was pretty old school. I've had a job since I can remember, and it's not like he was like, 'Hey, what kind of car do you want?' My first car was a '91 Ford Crown Victoria that was $1,000. And I had to buy every car after that. I had to do it all.
I got into an argument with someone because I said I think 2Pac will be regarded as a great poet. They said he was just a punk gangster. People said the same thing about Francois Villon, and he's now considered the best French Romantic poet of all time.
I guess home is where the heart is, as they say. I've moved around the stage a lot - but I had intended on moving to New York anyway so I could live closer to Ireland and to Europe. That's where my sensibility is. This has just facilitated that process.
Many actors have protested about mobile phones going off in theatres, but the real menace now is people texting during a show. It may only disturb a few people around them, but for me, as an actor, when I spot them answering their emails, I am outraged.
Because of ignorance, I wasn't a big fan of Marvel. I hadn't read the magazines. They were not as big in Europe as they are in the United States. They're more a part of modern American mythology. I know more about the original Thor than the Marvel Thor.
There are conservative values where certain lifestyles are imposed and everybody should have 2.4 children and a dog and a cat and a house and you should feel like God and you should believe in God and you should be a capitalist. I don't buy any of that.
Hollywood is run by people who sit up in their executive office, who are not connected to Mississippi, Alabama, Chicago, South Carolina. They know nothing about that, they don't go to church, and they make their decisions about what they think is right.
I would assign every lie a color: yellow when they were innocent, pale blue when they sailed over you like the sky, red because I knew they drew blood. And then there was the black lie. That's the worst of all. A black lie was when I told you the truth.
I was big into mythology when I was a kid - Arthurian legends and Greek mythology, that was kind of my passion. I hadn't heard of the books, but I was told they were very popular amongst the kids, so I got a hold of them and read them. I totally got it!
An extraordinary and controversial interpretation of Shakespeare's origins, which certainly provokes much thought. A radical analysis of Shakespeare's text, leading to a conclusion which is bound to amaze the reader and the scholar. Who was Shakespeare?
I want to be able to work on a project that will give people around the world the chance to represent their own people, their own culture, their own stories, rather than just Hollywood - really, you know, dominated Hollywood. And that's a dream of mine.
If anything, the way that you feel is a direct indicator of how far we've come from our symbiotic relationship with nature. In that way, when someone hangs a mirror to every single blemish that's on us, it makes you really reassess what your morals are.
Art is the ability to communicate through an intermediary and to convey one's feelings through an isolated object. It's inspiration and incubation. Putting my subjective feelings into an objective form and then on to you for a subjective interpretation.
A lot of women read male magazines. Of course, a lot of guys read female magazines, but they've got another issue to deal with. But a lot of women read men's magazines and think, 'Oh, this is what these guys are thinking? Studying up on the enemy here.'
I used to have the 'Best Of Eddie Murphy' VHS tape that I wore out completely, watching it over and over again. His 'Buckwheat Sings' is, to this day, one of my all-time favorite sketches on the show. I also loved the one where he plays the Tooth Fairy.
In my experience, 'SNL' has Lorne Michaels, who is, you know, the captain of the ship and gives the show direction and a singular focus, whereas 'MadTV' - even in my 13 episodes there - had maybe one too many cooks and was a bit more chaotic creatively.
Sprinting for a full day in Atlanta in midsummer proved very challenging. That humidity is crazy. Georgia is a beautiful state, but the weather is intense. I was warned, but for some reason I thought it would be like L.A. in the summer. The reality? No.
I'm not saying that comedy has to be a certain thing - I'm not trying to define comedy, where it's like, it can only be silly things. But I think part of what makes a comedy is that at least part of the mantra of the show is trying to make people laugh.
When you're the president, there's tremendous respect, and everybody goes out of their way respecting you and honoring you... it can be a trap. Nobody says 'Boo' to you, and nobody tells you you're wrong, hardly, if you have the wrong people around you.
You know, I'm a big comic book fan. As a kid I used to collect them until there was a horrible mudslide in Hollywood and I lost my collection, but I was also at an early age the voice of 'Jonny Quest;' it was a cartoon; so I am kind of a latent fan boy.
I've never liked talking about my personal life, ever. Ever since I was 20, I've lived in a kind of public arena; and there have been stalkers, blackmailers, death threats, physical violence and threats to friends of mine, colleagues of mine, to myself.
The script for 'Infamous' was so poised between tragedy and comedy. It's a dream part. One reads those scripts with a sense of melancholia. When you read a script that good I remember thinking, 'Oh, this script is too good. They'll never give it to me.'
I was cutting and threading pipe in the tunnels to get water into the shower rooms for athletics. I was repairing old metal windows, fixing cement walls where rain was coming through, and drying out the maple gym floors in hopes of removing the warping.
I mean, I don't want to come down on call-out culture, because I guess it has its place, but there was an interesting article I read by a black feminist writer who was saying it brings shame into the equation. And shame can be very paralysing to people.
My emotional investment started when I read the first scene of the actual drama [45 Years]. I can't explain it, there's no logic to it, but the notion of one's youth that somehow comes back but is gone, a man of my age connecting to that timing of life.
If you can run around the corner and say hello to someone do that instead of emailing. It's always more rewarding; the connection is always more authentic. If you've got something to say and you can say it someone's face, it's so much better, healthier.
It was really an experience, being my first time directing a movie. The scenes that I was in, Brooke really directed me all the time. And the scenes that both of us were in, Brooke directed those. Come to think of it, Brooke directed most of the scenes.
It was interesting to do a completely fictional piece. You know, Saving Private Ryan was not a fictional piece! So the challenge was: How do you incorporate real emotions? How do you incorporate aspects that people are going to be able to identify with?
There's an appreciation of the whole picture of life as opposed to just ambition and circumstance and all the stuff that happens in this business. You find yourself lucky enough to be working with somebody really talented who you know and who you trust.
You'd be surprised how much you don't understand what other people see your actions as; how other people view the things you say and the things that you do. And a lot of times just clarifying what your intentions are with people makes a huge difference.
I can't imagine myself doing something like 'Narnia' again. I would love to do something with Ridley Scott, you know, some action/adventure or something like that. But I'd also love to do a dramatic piece. It's really just whatever you read and take to.
I think in movies, in television, and in advice columns, often there's this idea that what people are really attracted to is confidence. And I think people, especially young men, sometimes misinterpret that to mean being brash, or trying to be an alpha.
I mean, comedy's hard. If you go back and look at the first season of 'Seinfeld,' it's a work in progress and that's what happens. It just takes time for people to figure each other out, and figure out timing, and to develop creatively with the writers.
People have always liked to be frightened. People love to feel that jolt of adrenaline. People love roller coasters. People love skydiving. These things that really get your heart pumping, and horror films are sort of a safe way to get that rush I guess.
Through my films I'm eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don't know if I'm ever going to get there, but I'm slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I'm 85, I'll look back and say, 'All right, that about sums it up.
The odd thing is how, I think, the intensity and devotion to my craft and the intensity of certain performances or types of roles I've played overshadow the comedic stints that I've had. 'Darjeeling Limited' is a comedy; The 'Brothers Bloom' is a comedy.
When you've got a teenager and a pre-teen, especially a son and a daughter, and they're going at each other at the table, all you really want is just five minutes of quiet, but sometimes I have a moment during the chaos when I think, 'Yes, this is good.'
If one tends to be a humorous person and you have a sense of humor the rest of your life then you can certainly lighten the load, I think, by bringing that to your trials and tribulations. It's easy to have a sense of humor when everything is going well.
I remember, growing up as a kid, history class was very washed-over. They didn't really get into the gritty bits of slavery. It's a very, very small section in the history books. It's not something they really touch on directly with American curriculums.
That suspension of disbelief that's required as an actor to live truthfully in imaginary circumstances is different to what needs to happen as a director, in the sense that you are the master of all the moving parts. You create the world in every detail.
I'm not necessarily a good actor, but once people start saying you are, you are. And I know that that's a truism, and there's obviously nothing important in that particular statement, but it's really about the fact that people create you as a good actor.