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Will Rogers became the biggest, most popular, and highest-paid star of every existing media of his time. The biggest star America ever produced. What is even more remarkable, the things he said and wrote remain as relevant and meaningful today as they did 60 and 70 years ago.
When I was a young kid, my pops introduced me to it. He took me to Harlem, 145th and Edgecombe, to watch the filming of Claudine with James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll. That was my first taste of seeing a set and the cameras, and I was bit by the acting bug at a young age.
Working with an incredibly strong script is the thing that gives you the most confidence. If you go into an episode knowing the script is strong, I just feel like that's where it all starts. All collaborations that happen, in addition to that, are just bonuses, at that point.
At the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century in Austria, there was a lot of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism in Austria was much more pervasive than in Germany. And Austrians took to Nazi ideas and anti-Semitism much more readily than Germans did, really.
The majority of the filmmaking process is in pre-production. The more you've planned out the more freedom there is on set to find new stuff, to play around, find new jokes and let the actors kind of breathe - but it needs to come from a place where it's completely structured.
Snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef, I saw something - I don't know what it was to this day. My mind couldn't relate to what it was... If I saw it and knew it was a shark, I wouldn't be as afraid, but I saw something that looked prehistoric, and I haven't been snorkeling since.
When I was first exposed to the films of Ingmar Bergman, I found them frank and disturbing portraits of the world we live in, but that was not something that displeased me. They were beautiful. I thought people would respond to my plays the way I responded to Bergman's films.
I had acne late, in college. My skin used to be really flawless. Went to college, became a vegetarian, ate a lot of cheese - big mistake. Here I am trying to be healthy and I'm eating grilled cheese sandwiches and French fries every day, having mad eruptions all over my face.
Look, I get it; you come home, you work hard, and you turn on your TV... You kind of want to escape a little bit and be taken away by something. Our show required you to pay attention, and if that's not what you wanted to do, then it wasn't going to be for you, and that's OK.
Greatness is not this, wonderful, esoteric, elusive, god-like feature that only the special among us will ever taste. You know? It's something that truly exists, in, all of us. It's very simple, this is what I believe, and, I'm willing to die for it. Period. It's that simple.
As much as I moved to New York and tried to work in theater as much as I could - I developed a relationship with Circle Rep - make no mistake about it, I really, really wanted to be in a film. It seemed like almost everyone I knew at least did something in a movie, except me.
Even though there's an entertainment value to the film, I think it's very important because you can't really separate the impact of that political message from it. It's rare that you get films like that I think; that really have an important message and are also entertaining.
Again, as a gay man I look at that and say there's a hopelessness that surrounds it, but as a human being I look at it and say 'Why? Where's this disparity coming from, and why can't we as a culture and society dig deeper to examine that?' We're terrified of facing ourselves.
I remember for my 18th birthday, I was going to get a tattoo, and I made the mistake of thinking I was a man and telling my father, and he was like, 'Oh yeah? You better tattoo a new address on your arm, because you're not living here!' And that was the end of that discussion.
We were filming in Greenland, and I treated my crew. It's 24 hours of pretty bright daylight there right now, and I always try to do something nice for my crew every trip or in every other city. So I greeted them with a midnight cruise, but it looked like two in the afternoon.
I'm sure everyone's got their back story. I don't come from a place of where I was tortured and needed to let something out. I came from a very happy home. I was a little out of control at times. But my family... we all liked to be funny, we all liked to make each other laugh.
Nine times out of ten, I'm trying to meet someone else's expectations, whether it's the director or the writer or the animator, when I go back in to re-record a line. I'm the icing on the cake, but the cake is the thing. I'm really just a hood ornament on a very solid vehicle.
Improvisation sometimes seemed more like jazz than acting, like verbal jazz, with the actors playing a theme back and forth, and then introducing another theme, incorporating it, somehow trying to work their way all together to a meaning of some kind, or at least a conclusion.
We look for opportunities to play together including basketball, tennis, swimming, riding bikes and touch football. I try to provide a loving environment where we can play. I think that's good on so many levels - emotionally, for family interactions and, of course, physically.
When I started out, I tried out all my stuff on national television. There were no comedy clubs, but even if there were, I don't think I would have gone to them. I used to do stuff in the bathroom, and then I'd drive down to NBC and do it on 'The Golddiggers' with Dean Martin.
I've always loved, as an Aussie, comedy is part of my life. My friends and I are always ribbing each other and that's how we get through the days. When it comes to cameras rolling and getting that timing right, the only way to do it and do it well is to throw yourself into it.
I wanted to work with Barry [ Jenkins]. I am a big fan of his from Medicine for Melancholy years ago. Tarrell [Alvin McCraney] is my favorite playwright. I will do anything he asks. The characters were so clearly drawn and three dimensional. It was an easy thing to say yes to.
I’m going to do a lot of weird stuff that’s not going to be like me prancing around like an insane 12-year-old. I showed everybody that side of me and I think it’s time to do different stuff, even when it comes down to the type of humor. I want to do some drier, weirder stuff.
I'm going to do a lot of weird stuff that's not going to be like me prancing around like an insane 12-year-old. I showed everybody that side of me and I think it's time to do different stuff, even when it comes down to the type of humor. I want to do some drier, weirder stuff.
The fun for me is knowing what the other person is saying and what my character would be thinking at that time. On the stage you get the chance to do all that, to analyze and build a part, to react, to contribute something no one else can-not the author, not even the director.
I've played drug dealers, all my life. I've made a career of killing people and playing all kinds of killers. The violence and drugs is portrayed in exaggeration. This is fiction. That is how I looked at it. And, sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. Just open a newspaper.
I was an altar boy in an incredible monastery that was attached to a rectory. The theater of the church is the most incredible theater, and in this church, it was beyond. It was this huge monastery. It was landmarked. It's a beautiful building, and I kind of had the run of it.
I know a guy who writes on the show, it was his episode, and he called and said, "Would you do it?" And I said, "Yeah." There's not really much else to tell, except that I was thrilled to be on The Simpsons, because it's one of the greatest series in the history of television.
Whenever you see riot footage on TV - you know, someone throwing a brick in Pakistan or somebody throwing a fiery piece of pooh through a Starbucks window up in Seattle - you ever see anybody throwing anything underhand? I think it just takes all the aggression out of the act.
'Restoring' is a very arrogant concept. If you're taking a house from 1812, do you restore it to how it looked the day after it was built, or restore it to the way it looked in 1828, or the way it looked in 1872? Do the minimum to stop it from falling apart, and then get away.
The more you humanize superhero characters, the more they're relatable. The more they have a vulnerable point, whether it's emotionally or their superpower, or whatever, we relate the superpower or the loss of a superpower to their emotions. It's just fun to walk through that.
Something's happened in our society which I don't think is beneficial, and that's that you see the public being fed box-office news. Newscasts now, every local station - I've been traveling around the country a lot, and you see the local news, and they give box-office reports.
I have to be honest, I dont pay as much attention to womens fashion, but being a sneaker head, I do like it when a girl can rock a nice pair of sneakers. Not every girl can do it. Every girl looks good in heels - thats a given - but not every girl can look good in fresh kicks.
What I always meant by that was that I do believe that a lot of directors, and writers, and sometimes producers just lose their edge because they haven't seen anybody or talked to anybody or been with anybody who isn't a kind of replica of themselves for a long period of time.
I wasn't really geeky. In terms of the high school hierarchy, I was very much in the middle ground. You have the really popular guys, you have the nerdy guys, and then you have the people who really don't care - and that was me. I wasn't really picked on or anything like that.
I didn't really like my Sydney accent - nobody likes the sound of their own voice - and when I was a little younger tried to change my accent gradually. But I've only ever really lived in Sydney and Los Angeles, so I haven't been influenced by the accents of some far-off land.
There were times when I purposely didn't go to school because of Pearl Harbor Day, because certainly there was enough media about it every year to remind everybody. So when I heard they were going to make the movie, I thought, "Oh, no, please not another Pearl Harbor mention!"
I like ambiguity because you may be the villain in someone else's story and the hero in your own, and I think very often, African-American characters are either one thing or the other. You shouldn't have to be perfectly good or perfectly bad. You don't even have to be magical.
I want a career and the thing is you really have to love acting. I didn't just fall into it and it wasn't just something I was good at. I've had to really work at this. I've had to fall on my face time and time again. You get 'no' 99 per cent of the time and a 'yes' just once.
It was weird. Like, people came up to me and knew me as Daredevil before any footage had come out. I remember a guy on the subway being like, 'You're Charlie Cox. You're Daredevil.' And I was like, 'Yeah...?' I was barely Daredevil. I hadn't even signed the contract, you know?
You're responsible for your own character to a degree, because when it comes to the final draft of the script, you might say, "Well, I think maybe I could add this here, add that there." But I find that I write just as well for the other characters as I do for myself. I think.
My wife and I have mellowed out as we've gone along. With the first baby, when she cried, we'd think, Oh my God, what do we do now? But with Finley, our fourth - he's the easiest baby ever, and I think that has a lot to do with the fact that we're much more relaxed these days.
I know that me personally I'm different than anyone else, just like our mothers all tell us we're all very special and unique and we are, and I think if an actor can stick to trying to make the character resemble something from their own spirit it will automatically be unique.
Everyone always tells you that you're the only one that can do this or that role right, and if you say no, they go to somebody else and tell them that they're the only one that can do it right. But when they're talking to you, you're always the 'Best Actor of Your Generation.'
I'm not an actor that tends to care. I don't ask 'Is this a close up? Is this a master? Is this a wide? What are you doing? If I look up and notice the camera I go 'Oh, it's a big one today, must be an IMAX.' And that's kinda it for me because it doesn't affect what I'm doing.
If anybody asks me what I attribute the longevity of my career to, then I say it's because I was never satisfied with being a cowboy in the plains of Spain and later I was never satisfied with just playing a detective in San Francisco, and constantly just pushing the envelope.
If you approach a film with the feeling that you are going to have some impact on society then you're liable to get carried away with yourself. Alfred Hitchcock once told me, when I was analyzing a lot of things about his pictures, "Clint, you must remember, it's only a movie.
I grew up with J. Edgar Hoover. He was the G-man, a hero to everybody, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was the big, feared organization. He was ahead of his time as far as building up forensic evidence and fingerprinting. But he took down a lot of innocent people, too.
I was in 'Cliffhanger' years ago, so I'm a massive fan of the big event movies - the good ones - but there's a lot of crap that's made in between the good ones. It's just the superhuman films that I can't get my head around. I guess if you're a fan of them, then you love them.
It's mainly about working hard and proving to people you're serious about it, and stretching yourself and learning. The mistake a lot of actors make, particularly young ones, is allowing themselves to feel that they're the finished articles, the bee's knees, and it's not true.