Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I always appreciated that connection between a parent and a kid because I yearned for it so much. Growing up, I wanted a father, and because I've had this idea of what a father should be, it's exciting to finally have the opportunity to try and be that guy, to see if I can actually do it.
Stardom is just an uneasy seat on top of a tricky toboggan. Being a star is merely perching at the head of the downgrade. A competent featured player can last a lifetime. A star, a year or two. There's all that agony of finding suitable stories, keeping in character, maintaining illusion.
My mother worked all of her life, she was a dance teacher and I also noticed, to be honest, that most of the male directors wanted to blow things up so there was like an open area for somebody who wanted to direct women movies, chick flicks, whatever you... I don't call them chick flicks.
There's a certain cruelty to being on a big screen as your eyelids start to sag and your hair falls out and turns gray that you either have to be able to handle or not. What you can't do is try to force yourself into roles that you could have played or would have played ten years earlier.
I think one of the major misconceptions about me is that I live my life the way people think I lead my life, with hot and cold drinks running everywhere and a party all the time. They think of my life in terms of certain excesses that don't really exist. Things are actually fairly simple.
I was on 'Junior Star Search' when I was 10 years old, in the acting category. The adult version of 'Star Search' didn't have an acting category, but for the kids, they had an acting category. It was the strangest thing. It was full blown 1980s, with big hair, mullets, and the whole deal.
Cold Case Files and similar shows do bang up business, which points to a certain thirst for details in the viewership, but it seems like all the news chat shows continue to force the myth that Americans can’t stand detail and have no interest in an idea that can’t fit on a bumper sticker.
I happened upon a memoir by a midlevel White House staffer, and he had been in the room that [Nixon's last] night [in office]. This guy's memoir told me what Nixon's last words were. And they were, on August 8, 1974, to the crew: "Have a Merry Christmas, fellas!" That was just so bizarre.
Driving a motorcycle is like flying. All your senses are alive. When I ride through Beverly Hills in the early morning, and all the sprinklers have turned off, the scents that wash over me are just heavenly. Being House is like flying, too. You're free of the gravity of what people think.
I’m not good-looking. I used to be, but not anymore. Not like Robert Taylor. What I have got is I have character in my face. It’s taken an awful lot of late nights and drinking to put it there. When I go to work in a picture, I say, ‘Don’t take the lines out of my face. Leave them there.’
I've been playing both sides of the law my entire career. It's not really surprising for me to be doing opposing sides simultaneously. I would argue that even though my character on 'Hawaii Five-0' originated on the wrong side of the law, I'd say he's worked his way over to the good side.
My memory of 3D movies is Fernando Lamas in a swashbuckling movie. And I suppose it had been the fifties, in which swords came out at you, bullets came out at you, things were thrown into the auditorium, apparently. All that sort of cheap, "Oh, look at us, we've got 3D" isn't in the film.
Not only our political system is broken, but how we do business and have public discourse with one another. The system in Hollywood, specifically, is not depicting people of color; we're not even talking about Asian Americans or Latino Americans; we're not even getting into that question.
The cool thing for me is, I go to a lot of conventions - a lot of science fiction conventions like Comic-Con - and there are always a lot of attendants of color. And I think some people believe that black people or people of color are not into science fiction or hero shows or genre shows.
When you look to the past, don't sit and dwell on your regrets. Instead, focus on the things you learned from each experience and how they may enrich your future. Use the past not as something to hold you back, but as a method for reaffirming the drive to move forward on your chosen path.
I was brought up, and my sister too, with two people who were always saying, "What you do is really nowhere near as important as the things that are going on in the world, and if your work needs to reflect that, or you want it to, then you need to strive for a certain type of excellence."
When you're outside in those elements, there's something out there that takes it out of you, so you work real hard. It was physically demanding, but in a very good way. It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing, when things are physically demanding 'cause everyone is rising to the occasion.
If you look around us, there are an awful lot of men out there, and women, but mostly men, who believe that they have got a fast-track path to Heaven, if they do the things that they believe God is telling them to do, and I don't just mean Islamic people. I mean Fundamentalist Christians.
Acting is a great way to make a living, especially when I consider what my alternatives were and probably still are. I mean, you are only making movies. It is a lot less pressure than being a surgeon; although it seemed like the only other thing that I was qualified for was manual labour.
When I was trying to find work after drama school in London, it felt like the same actors always got the plum roles, especially in television. We have a smaller market place, vastly fewer drama-producing networks, and they seem to compete for the same established names for those projects.
Actually, music gave me the support when I needed it. I would never have gone to college unless I'd gotten a piano scholarship. And now I'm so glad I got to learn to play the cello, which is a different experience, you're flexing a different muscle, but it's beautiful because it is music.
I used to do lots of independent films and for a while I was very content living in New York City and doing independent movies and off-Broadway theater. I loved it, I had a really good time doing that, and I worked on a lot of projects that are very dear to my heart, both plays and films.
I would love to do more movies. I'd like to get into some theater, too, if I could, just to learn more. I want to do gritty performances that I'm proud of. It doesn't matter to me if four people see it or millions of people see it, as long as I perform in such a way that people go, 'Wow!'
When I was 17 me and my friend had mopeds. We used to play a game where we would close our eyes and drive while counting to the highest number we could. Once I got to eight, and that was pretty much the most stupid thing I've ever done in my life. I ended up on the other side of the road.
I get 'The New Yorker,' and I'm usually about three issues behind. But I do catch up. The problem is that it always seems like homework, but then you start reading it and go, 'Why am I not doing this all the time? These are such great stories!' But, yeah, that stack gets so big and dense.
When I see myself at 14 years old I can put my hands on my head and think: 'How could I have done that?' but at that time it had sense for me. You do the same when you're 20. And now, when you look at people who are 20 years old you ask yourself: 'Was I like that? Was I really like that?'
I started to have panic attacks on stage and my wife just asked, "Why don't you just stop?" I was doing Ghost Whisperer at the time so I was making enough money where I could put it away and she said, "Then, when you go back, you just go up and tell the truth." And it's a lot more tiring.
I think I made $55 a week, and it was bliss... I was doing theater. It was all I ever wanted to do. It was so much fun, and you got paid for it, and you met people, and it's the greatest education in the world. And in my little Greenbrier station wagon, I felt very much like a troubadour.
In terms of whether my mom was influential, I think she instilled a certain way of thinking in me quite early: having a reflective mindset regarding my actions and trying to find the underlying reasons to behavior. I think that's quite helpful when you're trying to understand a character.
If there's anything I know about directing, it's how to make actors comfortable. It's where I started and it's what I know, and it's what I love. I like when the actors are really partners and I want them to be excited and I want them to surprise me. I don't want them to be puzzle pieces.
It was at a performance art space that's no longer around, Gusto House... All of these great performers from all over the country lived on the Lower East Side, and they would take somebody's living room that opened right onto the street, open the door and charge tickets and put up chairs.
I mean, dear old 'Bergerac', or dear young 'Bergerac' as he was then, he had a gammy leg, he was going through a nasty divorce with his wife, he was a recovering alcoholic, it's a wonder he can get up in the morning let alone solve any crimes. And he also had to drive that ridiculous car.
Something can happen in your life, and you might want and need something different from your spouse. Most people forget that you have to create relationships. The allure of the first years settles down, and at that moment, you better start creating it; otherwise, you're going to lose out.
What attracted me to Jimmy Bulger were the various facets of his personality and his humanity because I felt that the only way I could approach playing a character like him was to find his human side first and then map that out to see where it took the turn. He was a very complicated man.
I really just think it's disgusting when people - to actually say that you want to be famous, it's just gross. There's nothing wrong with fame, but to seek out the spotlight just to be on TV for the sake of being on TV, and to put your children on there, I think, is especially disgusting.
When you go out to make something, you want it to be great. You need to put a bubble around that, so no one can get into the force field and change what you're setting out to make. That's all us being producers is doing, is allowing our power to protect the integrity of what you're doing.
I've been very lucky to have a family who has welcomed me and not been hung up on anything racial, almost overlooking the fact that there was a racial difference. But I can honestly say I do feel like I missed out on some lessons of what the African-American experience is like growing up.
I had the classic 40 meltdown, I did. It's embarrassing. It was pretty funny. But then I recovered. To me, it was like a second adolescence. Hormonally, my body was changing, my mind was changing, and so my relationship to myself and the world around me came to this assault of finiteness.
I had the classic 40 meltdown. I did. It's embarrassing. It was pretty funny. But then I recovered. To me, it was like a second adolescence. Hormonally, my body was changing, my mind was changing, and so my relationship to myself and the world around me came to this assault of finiteness.
Being a Lions fan is like being a Cubs fan: you just have to keep going. You don't have a choice. You can't give up, because one day, when it happens - and I believe it'll happen - then you can really savor it because you were there in the doldrums, and you get to be there in the victory.
The only one that I think I could beat, if my life depended on it, would be the Predator. If it was in my territory, in my domain, with the guns that I've got, I think I could hurt him pretty bad. That's the only one, though. When you get into metaphysical creatures, they don't play fair.
The thing that I love about 'Will & Grace' is that there's a clear-cut reason for my character to be there. I come in with the zinger. My character seldom has much to do with moving the story ahead. I know exactly what my job is there. It's just a party, basically. I'm just having a ball.
I understand, certain scenes have to have a lot of takes. As an actor, I think it's quite nice to have a handful of takes, because you don't want to do it once or twice; I think once or twice sometimes is quite terrifying because you don't really feel like you've given them what you want.
Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there's gonna come a time that you're gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.
Generally speaking, I'm a jeans, T-shirt and boots man but I do own an Armani suit, which gets a regular outing. It's nothing fancy - just a classic, well-cut suit with clean lines and beautiful tailoring. It's timeless and you can mix and match it with anything to dress up or dress down.
I didn't act in college, per se, because I didn't want an acting degree. I don't know what you do with that degree. When I was 16, I saw 'Usual Suspects,' and I wanted to be a director as well. So I thought I should go to school for directing and producing, something I knew nothing about.
When I was young, you went to school, dealt with your friends and drama, went home, did your homework, went to bed, and started over the next day. But that social interaction that happens at school doesn't end now - it goes until the minute you go to bed and starts again when you wake up.
You know, to me, that's going to influence the culture. They both influence each other - I know that - but, you know, there's no two ways about it. When you're just immersed in kind of this dark, edgy constant flow of entertainment, there's no way it can't affect you. There's just no way.
I think people can just make things now. It's kind of what happened with the music industry. Before, a band couldn't afford to go into a nice studio, or if they were going to go into a nice studio, they had to record twenty-five songs in two days. That's not a healthy workflow for anyone.
I'm trained as an actor for the stage - classically trained, believe it or not - and I worked closely with Stella Adler for years. People don't know that much about it. They just think I am these people. But I've been in this comedy racket, because it's just how everybody wants to see me.