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I work out religiously. It's great for my back. It's great for my core. I've been exposed to lots of exercise regimens and movement classes as an actor, so I understand the importance of stretching and staying limber, but Pilates is what's really spoken to me. It works everything out.
Dating is so insecure. My last relationship, I was always there for her and she dumped me. I told her about it. I said, "Remember when your grandma died? I was there. Remember when you flunked out of school? I was there. Remember when you lost your job? I was there!" She said, "I know
Doing a TV show where it's a very relentless schedule, it does democratise you in a brilliant way. It does chip away at the old ego and you do realise that you're only really ever as good as the words that you're saying, the people you're talking to, or more importantly, listening to.
I learn the lines as soon as I can and then the challenge really, for filming, is to show up and be there and respond to what's around you. That's where the gold dust is. It's really strange, no amount of preparation will help you with the magic of spontaneity on the day [of filming].
What happened is, when I was doing 'Taxi,' the last year, we did this thing where we had on top hats and tails, and we pretended to tap-dance. And I said to myself, 'You know, I always wanted to know how to do this.' So I got myself a teacher, and I started studying, and I got hooked.
The Eisenhower Building - the furniture is mismatched; everything is just bad decor and bad quality. Everybody's looking down at their Blackberry. It's a really frantic, mismatched environment. But on the exterior, it's this whitewashed, gorgeous building. It's a fascinating contrast.
It's not like I wakeup everyday and say, 'You know what, I need to do a horror film.' Statistically it's only like forty percent of my output but it's a great ride and the fan base is really dedicated and that's always cool. When you're lucky enough to be in a good one it's fantastic.
There's nothing in the world like live entertainment. With TV, you have to wait for your results; with live entertainment, people let you know right then and there. That relationship is established in 30 seconds. The first 30 seconds, they'll let you know whether they like you or not.
I've been saying I really want to get a 1992 Jeep Sahara, and I'm going to paint it so it looks like the 'Jurassic Park' Jeep. I've actually seen a guy who did have a Jeep Sahara, and he did make it look like the 'Jurassic Park' Jeep. I gave him a thumbs up and said, 'You're awesome!'
Looking at acting, in the movies or the theater, and the way I like to look at it, it’s just an extension of childhood play… Kids play and imagine in a very intense fashion and they don’t need any director telling them “You really have to believe in it.” They believe in it completely.
What was bizarre, when I was younger, I never watched TV. I would rather watch a movie 100 times than to watch a TV show, just to find another nuance. I can't tell you how many times I've watched 'On the Waterfront', just to find a flaw so that I can learn and try to improve my thing.
Using the Africanist model, each generation should take the family name to a higher place. My father's folks were sharecroppers in South Carolina. He went to Harlem. They were still poor, but they moved up. If my parents didn't do this and offer me this background, I wouldn't be here.
When I was about eighteen, I saw myself as a rather sensitive, delicate, poetic, romantic figure. And then I got into the Civilian Conservation Corps and into the army, and I started smoking and drinking and being tough and getting muscles, and I had a whole different image of myself.
I wanted to be involved in TV and film in some capacity, so a compromise, because acting seemed unrealistic, and so risky, was to get into the production side. And it was a really fortunate, smart move looking back on it, because it gave me perspective on another side of the business.
It's good to please the network, but you really just have to tell the stories you want to tell, and if you try to please other people, it ends up starting to water stuff down. Those decisions we have to make are hard, but we usually just err on the side of 'What would we want to see?'
I'm fortunate enough to have had an opportunity to do a range of stuff, and the thing I admire most in actors is versatility, those that morph and change, those kind of chameleon actors who are unrecognisable from one job to another. That's something that I aspire to establish myself.
I think we have a responsibility to shape the zeitgeist with the movies we put out there. Because 'After Earth' isn't going to do it. 'The Expendables 3' isn't going to do it. You could make one million amazing films for the amount of money they spend on those films. I get frustrated.
I always perform live. I've even received a cortisone injection when I was losing my voice before a big gig so I could fulfill my obligation to the promoter. I felt it the days following after the gig in my throat, but it was nice to know I didn't let anyone down. The show must go on.
One of the first auditions I had in New York was for a commercial where I had to go in and audition to be a snake charmer... It was either some bank commercial or something where they wanted a guy charming a snake... I remember they wanted to know if I actually knew how to snake charm.
I was having an argument with my stepfather, and he was like, 'Why don't you join the Marine Corps?' And I was like, 'Noooo! Well, maybe, actually... ' I went and saw the recruiter, who was like, 'Are you on the run from the cops? Because we've never had someone want to leave so fast.'
Those films that really speak to the primal fear that we, as human beings, have about the unknown have always intrigued me. That's the really scary thing, not the slasher, macabre movies. It's the ones that deal with the inner fear: the unknown realms and the mysticisms that are scary.
'Heroes', 'Desperate Housewives', 'The Sopranos' - they're all very stylised. 'The Wire' is much more rooted in realism and honesty. In American television, I can't think of anything I'd rather have been in because it has got something to say and that is the kind of thing I want to do.
Is it possible to have an endless series of successes without falling on our faces? I suppose it is, but I think it would entail doing the same things over and over again without taking chances, without taking risks or exploring our limits, without finding out what we can and can't do.
Did you hear the one about the elderly Jew on his deathbed who sent for a priest, after declaring to his astonished relatives that 'I want to convert.' Asked why he would become a Catholic, after living all his life as a Jew, he answered: 'Better one of them should die than one of us.'
I think the thing about film is, as it gets proved by a lot of young filmmakers now, that the medium will just go on reinventing itself, and so you just hope to be a part of that and not a part of some kind of endless regurgitation or 'Here I am doing what you know I do' kind of thing.
It's crazy: the first black man to actually step foot in America came as a free man, as an explorer, with the Spaniards. That's something for me - as a black American, it gives me a little bit of pride because we were free and respected somewhere else before slavery became what it was.
Swedes are such a civilised, perfect society - at least on the surface. There's a great safety net, a huge middle class, free education, free health care. People are very polite, they wait their turn. They're not too loud, they're not too quiet, but sometimes it's a little too perfect.
For many people in the U.N., the 1990s was the worst decade the organization experienced. This was the decade of Somalia, Srebrenica, of Rwanda and so forth, and yet the reality is, during this period, although there were these awful conflicts, the overall number of wars had gone down.
I recognize that Hollywood is not about seniority. Often it's not even a meritocracy. It's about what you did yesterday. You have a couple of misses, and suddenly it's impossible to find a hit. So the swings are gigantic. But I've always understood it as such, and navigated it as such.
If Iran and North Korea, by some horrible, devilish, nightmarish scenario, got together and went to war at the same time, one against Saudi Arabia and one against South Korea, I don't know what we would do about that. I don't know that we could stop them short of using nuclear weapons.
Meryl Streep doesn't care how she looks. She just surrenders to the truth of the character. Not everybody has the ability to do that. They look good and they can pretend to be that person, it's not the same as being that person. And there are not many actors who will surrender to that.
Every week, there's a different equivalent of Charlie Sheen having a breakdown. I knew about Kim Kardashian getting married - and then getting divorced - and there's no reason I should. I don't have hostility toward Kim Kardashian - just toward the people who take that stuff seriously.
I grew up on certain movies, particular movies that said something to me as a kid from Missouri, movies that showed me places I'd yet traveled, or different cultures, or explained something, or said something in a better way than I could ever say. I wanted to find the movies like that.
The good thing about my part in 'Harry Potter' was that I was pretty well disguised. When I was walking down the street, there was no real recognition factor. Parents would sometimes call their children to come say hello to Mad-Eye, and the kids wouldn't know what they were looking at.
Dr. Okun. Who's named after a special-effects guy named Jeff Okun, who had done Stargate for Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, who did Independence Day. But "Brakish" just came up one day when Jeff Goldblum and I were improvising, and he told me his character's name and I told him mine.
I originally envisioned myself doing something with the suffix 'ology' at the end of it, like marine biology or entomology. But after I started to do some acting gigs, I thought it wasn't a bad thing... I said to myself, 'I might as well keep riding this bus until the wheels fall off.'
Once you start getting big roles as an actor, everything pays. So what are you making decisions on? It's about the director or the script or whatever. But before you reach that point, you're taking jobs with, say, a theater company, in spite of the fact that it's not paying your bills.
Never trust a man whom you know to have acted like a scoundrel to others, whatever friendliness he may profess to feel towards yourself, however plausible he may be, or however kindly he may behave; be sure that, the moment he has anything to gain by so doing, he will "throw you over."
There was a little less pressure to be fit on 'The Avengers' than 'Captain America.' I had just finished 'Captain America,' so I was already built. Plus, 'Captain America' has that one scene dramatic scene where my transformation is revealed. 'The Avengers' has not one shirtless scene.
Well, when you're the youngest of five, parents kind of lose interest more and more through the children. I think my eldest brother was under loads of pressure to do something amazing with his life, but by the time I came around they were like, 'Well, let's hope he doesn't kill a guy.'
I had been doing all my school plays, elementary school, middle school, and high school, and then summer. I'd wanted to act for a long time, and I thought I was going to go to college and do theater, go that route. But 'Superbad' kind of fell on my lap. I was very, very lucky for that.
Acting to me is a very organic art form and you just go and do it. And I like to direct the same way that I like to be directed. Let me bring in what I want to bring in, and if something's wrong, just tell me about it and I'll make some corrections or adjustments. And that's what I do.
Boxers, man, except when I have to get dressed up. Then it's boxer-briefs. But never tighty-whities. Never. But dude! If they brought back Underoos? Dude, if they brought back Underoos, I would rock the Underoos. Like He-Man and Transformers and G.I. Joe and even like Dukes of Hazzard.
As long as I am given the opportunity to keep performing and keep exploring in whatever medium, I'll be happy. As long as I get to spend time with my family, I'll be happy. As long as I can write in some form, I'll be happy. It is the essential things like that I equate with happiness.
I still recognized for television. Buffy is 70 percent, Gilmore Girls is 30 percent, and then Mad Men. If it's a mother/daughter, it's definitely Gilmore Girls. They usually say, "We always watch it together, and we feel like we're the Gilmore girls." I've heard that like, 5,000 times.
It is from him, from Beolco Ruzzante, that I've learned to free myself from conventional literary writing and to express myself with words that you can chew, with unusual sounds, with various techniques of rhythm and breathing, even with the rambling nonsense-speech of the 'grammelot.'
We start 'The Butler' in June and that's incredibly exciting for me because I get to work with the amazing Forest Whitaker again. It's a phenomenal script and a great, great role - I play his son. Oprah Winfrey is his wife and my mother. My character is a radical civil rights activist.
When I'm sat in the pub with my mates, they've got their stories: Richard and Tracy have split up, they went to Arsenal and this fight broke out... My anecdotes are like, 'I was in this bar, and Michelle Pfeiffer rang, and I had wax in my ear, so I couldn't hear what she was saying...'
From 18 to 29 I was a heavy smoker, heavy drinker, drug addict, terrible eater and philanderer. The past eight years, since I got sober, have honestly been about trying to peel back each of those habits, to get back to the 12-year-old kid inside who was tremendously excited about life.
I decided to go to school for advertising and graphic design. That was what I was gonna do but acting is that thing, its like a splinter in your mind and you cant get rid of it. So I decided to move to L.A. a few years ago and it just snowballed into this thing called The Hunger Games.