Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In the theater we're like blue-collar workers: It's a physical job, you don't make a lot of money, and you're on the road all the time. It's worth it in that it's the best job in the world, but you have to negotiate living in cities that don't always accommodate you.
I love that feeling you get once you leave a cinema having just watched a movie during the day. Your eyes slowly adjust to the natural light, and your mind, being a little slower, takes its time to separate the images of film from the reality you are suddenly facing.
David has asked me, a number of people have asked me and said, What performance do you like best or what's the best film you've made and so on and I don't really have any hesitation that the film I'm least embarrassed by and ashamed of or uneasy about is Shadowlands.
I always remember what Bob Dylan said in that [Martin] Scorsese documentary on him. When he was asked about Joan Baez's complaints about the way he treated her when they were together, Dylan laughed and said, "It's impossible to be in love and wise at the same time."
The idea of fixing of healing is an important part of any genuine spiritual approach. Kabbalah is very much about this idea of fixing of things that have been damaged. From a Buddhist point of view, things have been damaged because ignorance has intoxicated the mind.
I'm really into sci-fi. The reason I'm an actor is because of 'Star Wars' - I saw that and I knew that's what I wanted to do. But most of the projects I'm offered as an actor are straightforward dramas, so I haven't really been given a chance to do that kind of role.
People who drive slow in the left lane on the highway! Are you kidding me? Don't you see everybody passing you, honking and flipping you off? It's not because everyone else is crazy, it's because you're driving slow in the fast lane, you jerk! OMG! It makes me crazy!
A lot of the characters I play have problems, they are marginalised, they have serious psychological problems, problems with relationships, with childhood. These are big subjects, big subjects. You can't balk at work like that. As an actor, that's as good as it gets.
Lana Turner was adorable and funny. Jimmy Stewart was such a nice person. I quickly realized that if you're not a nice person, you're not going to last in this business. I mean, once your box office starts to drop off, like Veronica Lake, they'll get rid of you fast.
Money by Martin Amis. I read it when I was 15, I read it hundreds of times since then and it always makes me laugh. Amis has managed to create a world that is both funny and abrasive. I'd love to play John Self, the depraved hero, who's without illusions, he created.
I have no reason to influence people. I just want to have it all for myself. I just want someone to pat me on the back. (laugh) It's crazy. It seems just completely ridiculous. I don't know why. I mean, three years ago, I wouldn't be able to influence my dog to walk.
When I played Ivanhoe, kids used to come along and kick me because they thought I wore armour under my clothes. When I was Maverick, I was accepted as a cowboy. And in 'The Persuaders,' I became Lord Brett Sinclair. In other words, I am what I am for as long as I am.
I suppose to the outside world I do seem slightly obsessed. But I once had a balance problem with my inner ear, and the fear loitered. Yet I have found that golf is like a yoga procedure for me: it's had wonderful, sedative, remedial qualities for my day-to-day life.
I've been in this business for a long time at my age, I've just turned 30, and I feel like my wife's career is going incredibly well, my kids are happy and healthy in schools, we've both been able to buy a house for our parents, respectively, in the places they live.
The transformation is the most excruciating pain that you could possibly imagine, so you're mimicking this grand mal seizure while wearing crazy latex make-up. It's so bizarre. It's really out there. The most challenging part is the emotional and physical side of it.
I've composed a fair amount in my life, and some of them have made it on to the screen, some compositions that I've done, a few. And I like doing that. I had never really considered doing a full-length thing. I've worked with other people creating full-length pieces.
They [media] don't care if they're hurting anybody's family or hurting their reputation. The most interesting thing about it is that it's people doing it to other people. It's somebody who has a sister or a brother or a daughter or a son or a family. They don't care.
Online, I'm this loud, outrageous, confident guy who acts like nothing bothers him, and he has the whole world at his fingertips. In reality, I'm a shy, quiet guy who would rather spend his nights lying in bed watching Netflix than being a valuable member of society.
Character actors just pile up the credits because you work on a movie for like a few days. It's not like I'm the lead in everything I do - far from it. I'm not spending three or four months on a picture; I'm spending three or four weeks. Sometimes three or four days.
If you start to disrespect the character you're playing, or play it too much for laughs, that can work for a sketch, it will sell some gags, but it's all technique. It's like watching a juggler - you can be impressed by it, but it's not going to touch you in any way.
'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels' is a good one because it not only turned out, I think, to be a really funny movie but it was also a delight to shoot. We were in the South of France, working with Glenne Headly and Michael Caine and Frank Oz the director - who were just fun.
At first I had no skills in writing comedy. I didn't know what a joke was, but, as someone once told me, your emotions follow your intent. If you create the intention of starting a comedy act, slowly your mind starts adjusting and you arrive at a new emotional state.
When I first came to L.A., I worked at the Magic Castle, and it was so much fun. But the best part of magic for me these days is not having to do it for a living. It's being able to pull a trick out when people least expect it, when they don't know that you do magic.
Shoot, man, I loved being a damn heel. Something about that, just going out there and being the most despicable person you could ever be, was a real turn-on for me. And I grew up a real shy kid in south Texas, and it was something for me to lean on and have fun with.
I became interested in ocean issues in the 1980s when I couldn't take my daughters swimming because of pollution at our local beach. Twenty-five years later, I'm a board member of Oceana, the world's largest international organization dedicated to ocean conservation.
In every person we meet there's this little piece of God in them and that's who you talk to. And that's the only person that you allow to talk to you. When something else is speaking, you walk away from that. If it's not good, if it's not love, you walk away from it.
What lasting impact will I make on the world and those around me? What will I live my life for? How will I be remembered? I want to leave the world a better place than it was when I got here. I want to experience as much as I can in this very short life that we have.
Great directors turn in mediocre work, and first-time directors turn in exceptional work. No matter how good a person can talk about what he wants, you never know. You just have to go with a good story and a script that you like and people that you like to work with.
My reputation was a bit exaggerated. Things were written in newspapers, then copied, then doubled. One of the reasons why I never disclaimed that, was because I found it amusing. But I also constructed such an image for myself in order to gain more of a private life.
In any awards ceremony, if you're a finicky person like myself, you can pick a multitude of things to nag about. I get frustrated with the comedy category because it feels like it gets sidelined a lot of the time for all kinds of things - not sidelined, marginalized.
I'll admit a little something: If I go to one of those hotels where there's, like, a $50 omelet, I'm taking the silverware home with me. I'm not saying it's right. I just feel like it's an unspoken agreement where the mug and the silverware are just part of the deal.
I went to meet Joe Johnston, the director, and he's charming. I've been very lucky. Most of the directors I've worked with are charming. But Joe's a particularly charming man, and he showed me lots of designs and, rather memorably, welcomed me to the Marvel Universe.
I would've never done a 1970's road movie. It just wouldn't have occurred to me. So when he started talking about it he brought up all these movies and he'll do that with you guys and you'll feel the Goosebumps as you start realizing the story that he wanted to tell.
Some of the greatest actors have turned superheroes into a serious business: Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson in Batman; Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, the first venerable knights of the X-Men, who have now passed the baton to Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy.
The other great innovation are things like Transparent or One Mississippi on Amazon, Master of None on Netflix, and those half-hours. It's a lot easier to watch a load of those because it's far more palatable to go, "You know, I'm just going to do one more of these."
I worked at an old folks' home once in Harlem, and I was an activities volunteer. I used to do all these plays with the old people. I did 'The Wizard of Oz;' it was adapted. There was a guy there who played the harmonica, so we had an overture, and The Wizard was 96.
I'm not gonna play a part that doesn't instill some kind of fear in me. If I read a part, and suddenly, I'm thinking halfway through, 'I'm not sure I could get away with this,' I think of everything I can think of to keep me from doing it, that's the one I should do.
Movies can be effective in influencing people to think in ways they might not otherwise be exposed to. Social commentary in films is most effective when you're not aware of a soapbox. Making the point without force-feeding the audience is the most desirable approach.
You know Lincoln's famous remark about "God must have loved the common people, because he made so many of them?" Well, you are not going to get people's votes nowadays by calling 'em common. Lincoln might have said it, but I bet it was not until after he was elected.
I grew up in Venezuela, and when I was 14-years-old, my parents decided to sell everything and come to America. Five of us lived in a two bedroom house. It wasn't a sad truth, it was just the way it was [at the time]. That feeling is so universal for every immigrant.
For the first actual comedy-comedy I did, I took a comedy class in New York, which was full of slightly unhinged people. It was a pretty depressing crowd, very angry and strange people. But then I took a class at the Upright Citizens Brigade and I loved those people.
I think the goal is always to go deeper within myself, and accept myself on deeper levels and to know myself on deeper levels. Whether or not I look for roles that are going to do that for me, I certainly look for the ways in which the roles I get can do that for me.
When faced with structural injustice, especially in the form of oppressive military occupations, I have a tendency get a little worked up. So I was interested in learning more about the complicated conflict and decided I would lend some of my time and energy to do so.
The Marine Corps is some of the best acting training you could have. Having that responsibility for people's lives, suddenly time becomes a really valuable commodity and you want to make the most of it. And for acting, you just have to do the work, just keep doing it.
Just having the internet is a weird and dangerous thing because people become accustomed to knowing things when they want to know them and not having to work for it. I definitely see the value in not knowing everything and having mystery in life and mystery in people.
This character feels so much like my brother. He has two children. He has a wife. He works with me. He chooses to stay in New Hampshire because he wants his kids to grow up in the school they started with. He doesn't want them to lose friends. He is his family's hero.
I have one of those Garmin watches, and I'm OCD about downloading my runs no matter where I go. I used it on an 18-mile run in Paris, a 12-miler in the mountains of Montana, a couple of runs in the Bahamas. Wherever I am, I try to run. That's what's so great about it.
What is beauty, anyway? It's more than something pleasant looking. If it doesn't stop us in our tracks and make us unable to move for a moment, unable to put into words what's closing off the breath in our throats, then maybe it's pretty, but it probably isn't beauty.
So there was a constant flow and a thin line there between reality and television and yes, much of what I was experiencing in my real life was also what was going on in the television show to the extent that I had to take writers advice and from the counselors around.
I had one line. My two larger scenes had gone fine, and then on that day I screwed up that line over and over and over again. And every time I screwed it up, they can't use the whole thing because they're only using the one shot [in Blue Jasmin]. That was my last day.