I respond to women who have their stuff together, who are in charge, who don't need men to do things for them. I want a woman to have her own thing, you know? My wife is very smart. She's got a doctorate degree; she's got her own career going. She doesn't need me to take care of her.

As artists, we are so not in control most of the time of the content or the narrative of our characters, and sometimes writing takes a turn and it's not something we necessarily have control over. It's just a lot of random dumb luck, so when things click, you've just got to enjoy it.

In a very general way, our society has fallen out of love with the skilled trades. Part of the problem is a myriad of myths and misperceptions that surround the jobs themselves, but the biggest cause is our stubborn belief that a four-year degree is the best path for the most people.

I think hip-hop is actually one of the most challenging things that's happened in music in a long time. The people who are in charge of what people see or hear are afraid. What you hear on top 40 or what you see on BET or MTV is not a fair representation of what is really going on...

Since I was very young, probably two or three, I had really good memorization skills. I would memorize stuff from TV and perform it for my family. I was the little performer for most of my early life. So eventually, my mom caught onto that and thought I might want to get into acting.

I tell people 'America's Got Talent' is the best summer job you could have - you get to watch people strive for their dreams all summer long. So when you see me rooting for these people or dancing on the side of the stage, that's what I'd be doing if I was watching this show at home!

One of the most poignant pieces of recent science fiction for me was the portrayal of the adults in the Pixar film WALL-E. I feel like we're on the cusp of becoming fat babies in floating chairs being fed everything in shake form, and I feel like I am as prone to laziness as anybody.

Snakes are sometimes perceived as evil, but they are also perceived as medicine. If you look at an ambulance, there's the two snakes on the side of the ambulance. The caduceus, or the staff of Hermes, there's the two snakes going up it, which means that the venom can also be healing.

Six years ago, I looked at a picture of the world's greatest newspaper men. I felt like a kid in front of a candy store. Well, tonight, six years later, I got my candy - all of it. Welcome, gentlemen, to the Inquirer! Make up an extra copy of that picture and send it to the Chronicle

An actor has so much less space and responsibility. Sometimes you come on, and there are already tape marks for where you are supposed to stand, and the dialogue is already decided on. If you want to make a change and contribute something, it has to be approved by a number of people.

Women's humor seems to be a little more supportive. It's just kind of trying to make the other one laugh through funny voices and kind of talking about other people. I respond to that. I feel less like I'm going to get beat up in a room full of women than I do in a room full of guys.

In real life, a relationship takes a long time. Either somebody is involved with somebody else, and that's ending, or somebody's hung up on an ex, or your job isn't going right, and so you're focused more on that than relationships. It just takes a lot for two people to get together.

I think actors have a greater responsibility when doing comedy. It's as easy as anything to get cheap laughs, but that's not the idea at all. "The slight trip syndrome," we call it. With tragedy one can get away with things a bit more because audiences don't always know how to react.

I think the most extraordinary thing about fans is the level of excellence that they show in the work that they do. I mean, if you go onto the internet and see some of the fan videos that have been put together, they're just extraordinary; they could be programmes in their own right.

Success is all about being able to extend love to people. The people I consider successful are so because of how they handle their responsibilities to other people, how they approach the future, people who have a full sense of the value of their life and what they want to do with it.

Everything has become so easy. It's great that it's at your fingertips, but I miss those good old days. And we're connected, but it can be very alienating. There is this distance between all of us because we're speaking to each other through cameras and monitors and icons and Emojis.

A lot of us lead relatively sedentary lifestyles, so you have to motivate yourself and force yourself to go to the gym and do active things. The folks that have figured it out, found that thing that they love and made it a big part of their lives, it's easy for them to stay in shape.

I was doing a play out in L.A. 20-some-odd years ago called 'Goose and Tomtom' by David Rabe, and somebody saw it and the next thing I know I'm doing the table read of the film version of 'Glengarry Glen Ross' with Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon - one of the great films of our generation.

Trajectories aren't linear. Life's just a roller coaster. If you're getting a chance to do cool stuff, and it's varied stuff, just enjoy it. I guess I'm a believer in the randomness of life rather than it being a linear trajectory or an arc, a consistent smooth arc, towards anything.

Sometimes when you're inside a story, it's almost better if you don't think too much about its wider cultural significance or if you don't think about how audiences might react to it. That takes you out of the reality of the situation you're committing to as you're telling the story.

Rehearsing a scene beds a role into you. But sometimes, if you over-rehearse it without unearthing any new meaning in it, you can suddenly forget your lines. You realise that you are on a stage, not in the real world. The scene's emotional power, and your immersion in it, disappears.

I guess as I get older, I'm kind of getting drawn to the things that I really love the most, which is trying to figure out ways of blending politics with humor, and making it interesting. So I don't know if anybody's interested in this stuff, but I like it, so I get involved with it.

I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Winters. He's influenced everyone who's ever done improvisational comedy. You look to Jonathan Winters for inspiration. He paved the way. If you've ever made up something on the spot and made somebody laugh, you can credit Jonathan Winters with inspiration.

Had I not done Shakespeare, Pinter, Moliere and things such as 'Godspell' - I played Judas in a hugely successful production before I did 'Elm Street' - I'd probably be on a psychiatrist's couch saying: 'Freddy ruined me.' But I'd already done 13 movies and years of non-stop theatre.

In the business I meet some beautiful women, but to be honest, 80 per cent of them are raving lunatics and are to be avoided. It's just insecurity; actors are generally quite insecure. I wouldn't date, or I've never had a fling with an actress, and I'd quite like to keep it that way.

You really can't say enough about 'Blade Runner.' For that movie to have such a long life - you can't describe what a beautiful feeling that is. Initially, the movie was out of theaters in something like two weeks. But the people that wanted it back - the fans - they really saved it.

You know how sometimes department stores have these things where, if you win, you get 10 minutes to go in and take anything you want from the store? That's basically what I'm doing. I'm running in and just trying to grab as many characters as possible before they pull the plug on me.

Divorce was the darkest, saddest place I had ever been. It was a struggle - there were a good four or five months of not being able to get out of bed. It was the worst time in my life. You get through it. It's a process that's not easy, but I get less and less sad about it every day.

I trained as a classical actor in London for three years. We did Tennessee Williams and dialect and accent classes; they were one of my favorite things to do each week. And we'd strip it down to the phonetics and listen to the sound. It was a really interesting way to look at it all.

Sometimes earning awards doesn't matter as much as earning revenue or profit, or having a good response from the audience. No matter how many awards you win, if you can't earn any profit from your movie, if the audience doesn't like it, then it doesn't matter how many awards you get.

I go to Stanford, and I'm an economics major, not thinking I'm going to do anything with acting. A professor came to the dorm where I lived looking for people to audition for an August Wilson play, 'Joe Turner's Come And Gone.' I gave it a shot, got one of the lead roles in the play.

You never saw Peter Sellers the actor trying to make you laugh. All he was doing was the character. What I'm saying is that I don't think you should know you're in a movie. I don't like it when actors are winking at the audience and saying, 'Right, isn't this funny? Are you with me?'

It is the perfect wrong time for Jeremy to do to Mirabelle what she had done to him - call him up for a quick fix - because;, in a sense, she is now betrothed. Her first date with someone who treated her well obligates her to faithfulness, at least until the relationship is explored.

I have done a few roles that I've never watched, and if I happen to be flicking through channels and one pops up, I quickly move on. It's hard enough to sustain some self confidence without being reminded of things we'd rather not revisit but, in the end, it comes with the territory.

There tends to be this hierarchy of film and television, and theater is somewhere else in its own milieu. However, as actors, yes, we love to do theater because it's our story. Nobody can edit it, the curtain goes up, and it's ours for two hours or three, or whatever. And we tell it.

I had this one audition - I won't say the casting director's name, but she was on the phone the whole time I sang. I was literally doing my audition, and she was on the phone. So I guess whatever it is she was ordering for lunch was more important than the high C's I was belting out.

We were always in church, and always singing, so once I realized that music was something that I had a knack for, I sort of latched onto it, and it helped give me an identity and figure out who I was as a person. It informed my way into theater, which informed my way into television.

The book [Night manager] is amazing. It is amazing to act in any book adaptation, because a book gives you so many secrets and details that don't necessarily get shot in an adaptation. They give you a cushion underneath everything. The detail in the character, the detail in the tone.

I've had my moments of feeling miserable in my life, as has everyone, but it's not often that you actually get the opportunity to indulge that feeling. Mostly when people are depressed or miserable, they have to snap out of it because it doesn't work. It doesn't suit day-to-day life.

If I book a table at a pub, or I've got an appointment at an optician's or something, I'll walk in and I'll say, 'This is Tom Jones here,' And they'll go 'Awww, I thought it was gonna be him.' They think it's gonna be the real guy. I've been ridiculed a lot throughout my life for it.

I have friends who are black, white, purple, gay, straight, Martian, yellow, old, and young. I have friends who are animals and a few who I believe to be robots. All of them are people to me. In my mind, it's not about what you look like or what you do; it's about who you are inside.

I had such a horrible childhood. My father was already married with three children when I was born and my mother didn't know. So we grew up poor. We had no hot water until I was 17. I went to work in a factory, and worked and saved for months until I had the money to come to England.

None of the actor methods ever discussed what it would be like to play a character on film for over a decade, and what it must be like to return to a character and imagine the time off-screen, which is interesting. There's something as an actor that I enjoy about evolving characters.

The first paying voice-over gig I ever got was for a company called Harvard Community Health Plan, which is a Boston-based New England health care provider. I inherited a deep, gravelly voice from my dad, who has always claimed that if I ever get injured, he'll just take over for me.

I don't really have much of a skin care routine. I take a shower every day, but I don't wash my face before I go to bed or anything. I'll try every once in a while to put some moisturizer on my face. In fact, I would probably have better skin if I was religious about it, but I'm not.

Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist. That is near insanity. Do not misunderstand me danger is very real but fear is a choice.

Women, in order to recharge their batteries, gather in groups. They can recharge their batteries with their sisters. I tend to recharge my batteries in solitude, therefore the motorcycle trips. I need to be alone. As a matter of fact, I have to be careful. I could turn into a hermit.

Every person, whether in wartime or not, should keep a pistol and rifle in his house at all times. If a person is not going to protect himself, and wishes the government to do it for him, how can he complain when the government decides to protect itself against him, and executes him?

I'd love to take a year off and travel the world under the radar. I would love to do it really low key. I wouldn't need to stay in fancy hotels or anything; I just want to explore - but I don't know how I'd do it. Would I shave my head to try and go incognito? Ha ha! I'm not telling.

NI love watching science fiction because I feel like when it's done well, it's not just monsters, but philosophy. Really good science fiction like, '2001,' for example, or the first 'Matrix.' But it takes someone who's got a brain and thinks in order to do really good science fiction.

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