Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What motivates every other decision artistically or technically is the acting. This is what motivates everything. Never can a camera move be incompatible with the emotion of the actor at that moment. The movement, the style, the atmosphere, everything is dictated by the actor.
I thought I was going to be a theater actor. I moved to New York after college and did some plays and worked a lot. Once the realities of living as a theatrical actor hit me, I realized I wanted to start making a little bit of money and not have to bartend and work in theater.
I've made a point of trying not to play the same part, and of moving between theatre and film and TV. The idea is that by the time you come back, you have been away for a year and people have forgotten you. If you like having time off, which I do, that's a good career strategy.
I hope it's not all I'll ever do, but I know I've played enigmatic characters. For me, the good characters are people who get places, are devious, are cunning and tricky and hard to pin down. Obviously, if you play one and you do an okay job of it, that'll be on people's minds.
I'm not very active on social media. I'm not on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, or anything like that. But I think it's wonderful that they're out there. They're fantastic. I have a lot of siblings and friends that use it, and it's great for them. It's such a connected world.
I have very strong feelings about what modern fame means, and the toxicity of it. I read Naomi Klein's No Logo when I was 15. It's one of the things that's shaped my relationship to fame - to endorsements, to selling things. I've taken a certain path in terms of all that stuff.
I don't want to be lofty, but it was groundbreaking, in many ways, for musical theater, so that was really thrilling to be part of The Book of Mormon . And Girls felt very much the same way - there was an excitement about it as we were doing it; I knew it was something special.
One of the things about being on Twitter, for me, is mostly about just being on the pulse of what people are interested in, what people are doing and what people are looking for. I look at entertainment projects and storytelling and I really try to think about what people want.
Your shoes have to match your belt. That's rule number one for guys. You can't put the brown shoes with the black belt. Or a brown belt with a black wristwatch. Just don't do it! Also, I don't like boots with suits. And when you wear sneakers, make sure they go with your shirt.
If the director wishes to print it, then you have a series of choices, maybe millions of choices within that minute-and-a-half, or 80 seconds, or 2 minutes or however long or short the take is, you have all those choices committed to celluloid. I find that absolutely thrilling.
I shaved a lot off of a lot that I saw in that I like to be less is more and make everything count and not give anyone anything extra. I was what you see is what you got. It was organic. I came up with the persona. The persona is me, coupled together with a lot of my interests.
I always say if you're going to do a movie about Charles de Gaulle get a Frenchman, you know. I'm not French. And yeah, sure I could get with a dialect coach and work for six months trying to talk like a Frenchman. But there's some French actors. Just get one of them, you know.
My idea is to paint paintings so that when you walk into a room, I'm pulling you in, or that makes you suddenly stop and wonder: 'What is this? There is something groovy, something else going on here.' Also, I want to give you what is obvious and what is not obvious to the eye.
In junior high, I was picked on for being the small skinny kid who enjoyed being in drama. All the drama kids, we were looked at like we were aliens, and people would call us names and say, you know, 'It's stupid to be in drama.' They would say a lot worse things, to be honest.
It's the transformation that drives me. I want to do it all and never want to be boxed into something as a particular type or style. I never want people to think they know me. I hope to build a repertoire that one can look at and say, from to role to role, 'Was that Brian Tee?'
I try to encourage people to really love what they do, like when it's about being a part of this business [entertaining], love what you do because it's not going to always be defined by who you are. It's going to be a lot of times your good name walks in the door before you do.
I'm not not looking for a girlfriend - but I'm not particularly looking for a girlfriend, either. I'm not knocking having a relationship; at the end of the day, you want to share with someone. But I just look at it as, I have the rest of my life to do that. I'm not in any rush.
As actors you're always afraid to go too far but Lasse Hallstrom wants you to go too far. He wants you to do it wrong, to be over-the-top, and that's so freeing to be able to think 'Now I can try and be bad'. There's no pressure on you and you don't feel you can make a mistake.
I always remind myself that whenever I see a good review or hear a good opinion of a role that I've done that it's just an opinion, and therefore it's technically neither right nor wrong; it can't be. It's not a fact, it's not solid, it's not something you can bet the house on.
The big challenge for me was just trying to ignore the embarrassment of being an actor. It's a pretty embarrassing thing to do. You've got people pointing cameras at you and hundreds of people watching you, as you're trying to be great. And often, almost every time, you're not.
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.
You know, I don't talk about the characters that I play. Years ago, I was a little timid about it and I kind of squirmed when I was asked, 'Could you tell us something about your character.' Now with a little self-confidence that comes with the grey beard, I just flatly refuse.
A lot of times people get to a certain age and they quit. I always felt sorry for the Frank Capras, the Billy Wilders, directors like that, because they quit in their sixties. Why would you quit? Think of the great work they could've done in their sixties, seventies, and on up.
As any actor will tell you, the hardest thing to do is small parts, because you focus all your attention and concentration on that small part. When you're playing the lead part, you don't have time to think about the whole of it, so you just have to steam on and get on with it.
I believe in the goodness of man, and I believe we're all connected and that connection is through God. We have our differences. But if we will recognize that we like each other, that we are more common than uncommon, we will work toward what needs to be done to reconcile that.
I really love to act. I really love to touch the people with my work. It's about giving people what they want to see. I love to see someone who's gonna be real, be truthful to his work and that's what I try to bring every time I step on a set. That's what I did for Tupac movie.
It's not a big part, ... I wheel in an ultrasound machine and say to Taylor's gynecologist, 'If you have a problem with it, just give it a light tap on the side.' Then they hand me a urine sample, and I put it up to the light and say 'Hmm, looks pretty healthy, but I'll check.'
The theater is a need for me. It's a terrible attraction, something I'm compelled to do. And one derives a form of nourishment from the theater which you can never get from films. Making films weakens you in some way. With the theater, the work itself is a regenerative process.
We are contaminated with the idea of "winning" and defeating others. Indoctrinated by parents, schools, and our ubiquitous media, hammered with a lie: The only way to be truly triumphant is if we are dominant before supposed "competitors" rather than beautiful before ourselves.
The Second Amendment comes from the right to protect themselves from slave revolts, and from uprisings by Native Americans. A revolt from people who were stolen from their land or revolt from people whose land was stolen from, that's what the genesis of the Second Amendment is.
The best thing ever is when some guy in his 50s taps me on the shoulder and says, 'I just want to let you know I hate my job, I hate my wife, and I come home and I watch reruns of your show and it's the only half hour of the day when I laugh and I forget how miserable life is.'
Everyone that works under the Coen brothers , in every department - makeup, hair, production design, wardrobe, so on and so forth, grip, lighting, tech, everything - they're the best. So to be on a set when you're working with the very best in the industry was a real privilege.
I want to talk about my very first play, when I was in eighth grade. One day, my English teacher, Mrs. Baker, announced that we were going to read 'On Borrowed Time' out loud in class. I was a mediocre student; I was terrified that she was going to call on me, so I hid my head.
I'm quite happy to leave it still feeling that way, leave it before it starts feeling like a job. ... I have such fond memories of watching 'Doctor Who' when I was a kid and growing up, that if I've left anybody anywhere with memories as fond, then I feel like I've done my job.
That's one of the main things I've learned: honesty is paramount. The biggest thing I try and instil in my daughter. My deepest regrets have been to do with times that I've been dishonest. There's nothing worse than getting caught out in a lie. It's excruciatingly embarrassing.
We all are doing the best we can. I would like to say that I'm a walking poster board for feminism and women's liberation, but there are things that I do in my life that deeply, deeply fall short of being a statement for being a strong woman. I am flawed as much as anyone else.
The Horny Toad in Cave Creek has great food. When I'm in Arizona, I have at least one meal there. I have a daughter who lives out there, and Dee Dee Wood, who was the choreographer on 'Mary Poppins,' lives out there. I still get out there once in a while, but not in the summer.
Hollywood is great for entertaining people, it's a wonderful business but it's make-believe, you must remember that. That's one of the most important things to remember and the distinction in your own life, otherwise people get lost in their own fame, and it makes them unhappy.
Stallone is a great writer. He wrote one of the best screenplays ever written. Rocky. It is one of the biggest classics of all time. I think in the past, he was shying away from writing his own stuff, because there is a lot of pressure when you star in something that you write.
I like films that deal with some of those questions that you can never answer. Why are we here? What's it about? What happens to us with the choices that we make? What are the ramifications for doing something right, or doing something wrong? Those universal questions, I enjoy.
Everything about filmmaking is incredibly weird, and there's nothing natural about watching yourself on the big screen or hearing your voice. It's that same thing that you feel when you watch yourself on a video camera and you hate the sound of your voice - it's that times 800.
Dan Curry is the funniest guy in the world. I can sit in a room with him for hours, and he's just cracking me up constantly. And Kitao is the next Terry Gilliam. A lot of comedy directors are just comedic writers, but they don't have any sense of aesthetic or visual vocabulary.
It all started in Michigan. My dad got a job in Michigan, so we all moved up there from St. Louis. I kind of hung out in the summer and had nothing to do, so I sort of got into acting. And then I was going to Grand Blanc High, doing the acting thing and hoping it would pan out.
At first, I didn't know what an actor was. I thought it was an acrobat. I saw acrobats at the circus, and I thought that was interesting. In my head, that was what I imagined I wanted to be when I grew up. Then I realized what an actor was, and I've gravitated to it ever since.
Trying to understand, inside, what it is to be Ugandan was crucial to the character, because there are Ugandan ways of doing things that I was trying to capture. Even if I had made this movie in South Africa, it would not have been the same, because it is so specific to Uganda.
The fun of cooking is the fun of communicating with people, even if it's just two people. As you're cooking, you're talking, you're having a glass of wine. It's wonderful; it's an experience. Once you get into cooking, it becomes something that you really look forward to doing.
People think that the arts are optional and they aren't. They teach a level of emotional depth that's equally important to mathematic skill. You can replace some math skills with a calculator if you know how to operate the thing, but there's no calculator for human interaction.
I'm a writer-director-actor, which I've always kind of enjoyed. I compared it to the Olympic biathlon. "Not only can he cross-country ski, but he's a terrific marksman as well." I want people to say, "You mean that writer performed a tracheotomy?" That's right, I do everything.
I often say that if you want to really want to understand the contract of marriage just ask anyone who has been divorced. The marriage contract is one of property rights. Or maybe you can look in the bible to see what Adam had to say about divorce since Eve was his second wife.
It's a mystery that thing about chemistry because often people who hate each other in real life and hate each other on the set have great chemistry on the screen. And people who love each other in real life and love each other on the set have absolutely no chemistry whatsoever.