Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I haven't worked enough to worry about getting typecast, but I do as a film lover didn't want to be working with the bad guys. I didn't want to be making a movie I thought was contributing to a lower base of movies that I just didn't think were helping people, really.
One thing that I've been very vocal about roles I take, and my representation has been very smart about, is that I didn't go to Juilliard to be "Thug #2" in movies. I like to be challenged. I'd say that about 40% of the roles I've done have been written for white men.
I'd imagine the whole world was one big machine. Machines never come with any extra parts, you know. They always come with the exact amount they need. So I figured, if the entire world was one big machine, I couldn't be an extra part. I had to be here for some reason.
When you saw Jon Lovitz or Dana Carvey or Phil Hartman doing something, they were acting. It was real acting. Like, they were acting like that person. They weren't like - it wasn't even like they were really trying to go for a laugh, especially in Phil Hartman's case.
One of the great tools we use in acting is the idea of immediacy, that the audience gets to see you witness something apparently for the first time, so you create a lot of tools to kind of trick yourself into making it appear something is happening for the first time.
I think love courses through all of us, and we can express it to one person all the time, or we can express it to everybody in our world, in our immediate world, in our extended family and all that and to strangers. I think as a concept. I don't mean you and me later.
Our marriage is like anybody's marriage, It goes through ups and downs. It's a little garden that you have to tend all the time. When we're home, it's not like we walk around all dolled up going, We are celebrities! We are famous! I change diapers. I clean up dog doo.
Seriously, my music really does help my acting, and, like, getting in and out of a character from a different lifestyle and writing a song about it. Likewise, my acting inspires the music because I can write a theme that I wouldn't necessarily approach at all in life.
I stopped and gazed on the little dull man who was being paid to be a teacher of teachers. I turned and walked to the door, slammed it closed with a bang, and broken glass crashed to the floor. There was uproar behind me in the class, which did not interest me at all.
I grew up watching movies and television, and one day when I was really young I told my mom I wanted to become an actor, and she was really supportive and got me involved in local theater and commercials. From there I moved up to auditioning for movies and television.
The director sets the tone, and if someone's ruling it with an iron fist, people are quiet and the days go long in my experience, when there's a very serious tone, the days just drag. When there's someone who, in between takes, is joking or laughing the days go quick.
There's always some pressure to achieve something. You make a pilot, but you don't know if you're going to get a show. And then, you make a show, but you don't know if people are going to watch. And then, people watch, but you don't know if enough people are watching.
I exposed people to magic. I exposed them to something they're never otherwise going to see in their boring, normal lives. And I gave that to them. I may forget about them tomorrow, but they'll live with that memory for the rest of their lives. And that's a gift, man.
You have to be very careful to view yourself with a somewhat skeptical eye and to remember that you're not here taking down everything I'm saying because you think I'm such a marvelous fellow but because your editors say go get 1,200 words or whatever on Chuck Heston.
With the Roxbury guys (on 'Saturday Night Live'), I think the breaking point was when Stallone came on and wanted to do the sketch just because. And we're, like, 'Well, now we've got to create a story, so, what, are we bopping our heads with Rocky? What are we doing?'
In society, we have these unspoken rules of conduct, these 'shoulds.' Even though we pride ourselves on being a democracy, there are all these ways we say you 'should' behave. But what if you're living your life by the 'shoulds' and you're not really living your life?
I guess that's the oddest personality trait for me - I'm too dumb and naïve to ever really be nervous about anything. I just don't take it all that seriously. I'm much more happy to go home and lay on the couch and watch I Dream of Jeannie with my fiancée and our dog.
I was at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where I thought, in my naivete, I'd stay for the rest of my career. I'd thought I'd work up through the ranks and go from spear carrier - or in my case, the eunuch, which was several rungs below the spear carrier - to King Lear.
An actor equals, sometimes, an entitled baby. People take care of things for me, and they pay greater attention to things than I was ever capable of doing. But in the last few years, I have learned a great deal more about taking care of things. I pay my own bills now.
Agent Coulson takes the work very seriously. He certainly has some fun with Spider-Man and the others, but he takes each of their tasks, including when they get involved with the drama club, way too seriously. The adventures that they come up with are really exciting.
'Lovelace' was really great. I got to work with the wonderful Amanda Seyfried, Hank Azaria and Peter Sarsgaard, so it can't get no better than that, right? I had a blast, and the film is a very, very well put together movie - from the director to the writing the cast.
The character I play has all these revolutionary ideas. I think the classic thing is that majority people who are criticising it probably have never read the books, and need to. And I'm sure that the Catholic Church, which is being directed as you know, can handle it.
I don't know if [Samuel] Beckett is something you ever bring to the beach - get out of the water, towel off, and start reading some of "The Unnamable." Although, because it's the kind of book you can open to any page and start reading, it is beach reading in that way.
The director of the [Grimm] pilot called me in. I had worked on a pilot called Love Bites with him, and the producers I worked on with on Hot In Cleveland, so they knew me from comedic worlds, and they wanted someone who could be light too. Because it is pretty heavy.
There are certain values that, in my opinion, television has lost - various moral lines. How far you go in, say, revealing what people get up to on reality TV, and also graphic violence and swearing - the taboo of various swear-words is no longer there. It's worrying.
We're not served by only knowing our finest hours through film or media, or in the history that we are taught. I think the only way we have a chance to not make the same mistakes again, is to historically understand the bad behavior and mistakes we've made previously.
I think daycare is great for people who have to work two jobs. My problem is with people who are dropping kids off at daycare because they want to go out and spend the day golfing or getting their nails done. You know what I mean? That's not why they invented daycare.
I judge movies on how much fun I had while I was doing them. I had a great time on 'The Right Stuff.' Doing that was fantastic. And there was the year I did 'The Rookie' and 'Far From Heaven,' which was amazing because those two different roles were just so far apart.
School bored me. Being educated and being intelligent are two different things. I thought I was smart enough. And I wanted to be an entertainer. I stopped going to school as a way of saying I was mature, a way of saying I was going to choose who I was going to become.
When I read the pilot for Married with Children, it just reminded me of my Uncle Joe... just a self-deprecating kind of guy. Hed come home from work, and the wife would maybe say I ran over the dog this morning in the driveway. And he would say Fine, whats for dinner?
I suffer from a more complex, persistent fear. It manifests itself in nerves, and on film the camera sees even the tiniest evidence of this. So you have to learn that when the director calls 'Action,' you don't go to this place of tension, but somehow you become free.
When I was about 16 or 17, I had a teacher who took a group of us to the National Theater in Washington, D.C., and I saw Ian McKellen do his one-man show - I think it was called Acting Shakespeare - and it completely bombed me; it put the zap on my brain in a big way.
I don't like being told that's where you, you know, if you walk on set and somebody was "okay, you're here and you're going to walk over there on this line." And my reaction is always how do you know? How do you know that's what I'm going to do? How do any of us know?
I think a lot of people are projecting their own troubles and fears concerning sexuality onto those around them, and it does result in the perpetuation of a lot of hateful notions. As long as I can remember, I've felt really horrified watching those dynamics play out.
I still feel lucky whenever I hear a director say, "Action!" Because then I think, "Whoa, I'm really in the movies. This is a real thing happening." I've never not been enthralled by that. I still love it. I still love hearing it, and I feel really lucky all the time.
I don't talk about how old I am because sometimes it can affect parts that you get in Hollywood. I don't believe that it's a necessary element. I feel that I'm a character, and I'm an actor. People focusing on my age instead of the role I'm playing can be a hindrance.
When Pearl Harbor was bombed, young Japanese-Americans, like all young Americans, rushed to their draft board to volunteer to fight for our country. That act of patriotism was answered with a slap in the face. We were denied service and categorized as enemy non-alien.
More than a non-acting director, I think I notice when an actor is not believing in themselves. Chicago actors in particular, they work very hard and are very talented, but sometimes they don't trust how talented they are. I notice when they keep something in reserve.
Well, you sort of get out of the pool room, you get out of the Marine Corps, you get out and read some literature, you become involved with people who also want to know and are ready to share some ideas about literature and thoughts, and it becomes nourished that way.
There's a heartbeat in any country that carries on regardless - at least in Europe. That's what worries me about America, because I'm not sure what that heartbeat is - unless it's the heartbeat of someone who's just arrived, who just ran over the border two weeks ago.
I used to pre-rehearse everything and then bring my pre-rehearsed performance to the set. Now, I'm learning to let it happen in the moment. American actors are much better at that than British actors. If I knew how to trust myself, I would have been much more relaxed.
I get anxious about a lot of things, that's the trouble. I get anxious about everything. I just can't stop thinking about things all the time. And here's the really destructive part - it's always retrospective. I waste time thinking of what I should have said or done.
If you're sounding right, you're probably walking right, and vice versa. If you get the footwork right - if you get even one line right in a rehearsal, the director will say, do you know when you said that, it was exactly the character. You were - really landed on it.
If I was on a march at the moment I would be saying to everyone: 'Be honest with each other. Admit there are limitless possibilities in relationships, and love as many people as you can in whatever way you want, and get rid of your inhibitions, and we'll all be happy.
When you're doing a medieval show like 'Pillars,' it starts off a bit like a school play. You're all in funny costumes; you've had your coffee, and you say, 'Good morning'. Then you go on set and, if you've got good actors and directors, it takes on a life of its own.
I feel vulnerable when I have no choice. It segues into every facet of life, whether it's love, work, family, or conservation. Here it is: the whole reason that I started the Ian Somerhalder Foundation was the feeling of complete vulnerability during the BP oil spill.
Action roles - or any role - should go to the best guy for the job. People obsess about nationality. Hollywood and America might be the hub for pop culture and cinema for the Western world, but that shouldn't suggest that all the roles should go to young American men.
When I was 12, I played the Artful Dodger in Cameron McKintosh's production of 'Oliver!' when it came to Toronto. Just getting the role shocked my whole family, and I don't think I realized until then just how much I loved getting up in front of people and performing.
There are too many African-Americans with too much money for us to have to go to anybody else for anything in terms of schools, in terms of scholarships, in terms of entrepreneurship, in terms of moving us along as a group to that place where we should be as a people.
For April Fools Day, someone played a really cruel joke on me. They stole ALL my mirrors and I had to go hours without seeing myself. I mean, I couldn’t even do my daily affirmations. What kind of world is this? I tell you, it’s artists like myself that really suffer.