Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Any kind of writing that's meaningful becomes hard work, so there were times when it would really flow, there were times when I'd get 10 pages a day, and then there were days when I would do three pages. Depends on the thickness of the material. If it's satisfying, it's hard, but it's pretty wonderful.
I would get records by Earl Scruggs... I would tune my banjo down and I'd pick out the songs note by note. Learned how to play that way. I persevered. There was a book written by Pete Seeger, who showed you some basic strumming and some basic picking... And I kind of worked out my own style of playing.
During the Second World War, we lived in a flat on Whitechapel Road in the East End of London. At one point during the blitz, the air-raid sirens went off every night for 30 nights, and each time, my parents would grab my sister and me and take us to the shelter beneath Whitechapel underground station.
When you get into a car, and there's trash, or it's dirty, or one of the hubcaps is off, you're like, 'Come on, dude.' Every woman likes the confidence and self-respect that says, 'I get oil changes. I look after my vehicle.' That's what I recommend: Act like you don't care, but take care of your body.
I used to do stand-up when I was in high school. But I was also making beats for this rap group, and when we got a record deal, I sort of stopped doing the comedy and focused on the music instead. When that ended, I decided to go back to school, take broadcasting, and start my show on public-access TV.
My son is a gentleman and a professional who is pursuing something difficult. Yet the only thing he has ever asked me for is advice - never favors. He has just said, "What do you think I should do, Dad?" It's extraordinary to me that my son would listen to and have faith in whatever wisdom I can offer.
If you're in a popular TV show, you can attract attention, and I like to help focus that on stories that deserve to be told - which is what politicians do. But I would lose my autonomy, and to get things done I would have to compromise and get into the weeds of policy. I don't know if I'm smart enough.
It's fun to look at people that are so good at acting that aren't actors, like David Bowie creating a mystique about rock n' roll. I've listened to 'Ziggy Stardust' as much as any rock n' roll fan - I don't really know what it's about, but it sure is fun to think about David Bowie as this mad creation.
I was a typical boy growing up, even though I wasn't particularly outgoing or chatty. I loved running around and playing football. My siblings and I are only a year apart in age, so we played together. Sometimes it was good being so close, sometimes it wasn't - like when they'd steal my candy and toys.
When I came to Hollywood, I would take the opportunity to get to know George Stevens or Willy Wyler or Billy Wilder or Freddie Zinnemann. David Lean I got to know, of course, in London. And David Selznick and Darryl Zanuck, not to mention Jack Warner, and Sam Goldwyn was actually very, very nice to me.
Different scenes call for different acting styles. The kinds of scenes I like most are the ones where you just bury yourself in there. So I wouldn't say that's the only way to be funny, but that's my favorite way to play stuff, to try to put myself in a situation where that kind of acting is necessary.
Ability is all right but if it is not backed up by honesty and public confidence you will never be a successful person. The best a man can do is to arrive at the top in his chosen profession. I have always maintained that one profession is deserving of as much honor as another provided it is honorable.
I really love hanging out on the set, and I love the life, and all of that. But I don't think I could stick with this profession if it weren't for those 15 minutes a day when I get to act. That's the part I love. For some strange reason, it's the time that I'm the least self-conscious in my whole life.
They [teachers] beat it right out of me. Or they beat it into me and educated it out of me. I don't know; that's an interesting question. The Catholic schools required work, so I think that may have been where the work ethic came from, in answer to the question of how my character may have been shaped.
One of the things I like about being a celebrity is that you can get away with murder. Not just metaphorically, literally. Remember that annoying blond dog reporter at E News used to talk smack about me? I paid two mobsters five million dollars each to throw her off the Stratosphere tower in Las Vegas.
I could see why someone would want to make a website about me, and my quotes. They are all gold. How many people have written, directed AND starred in their own movies. I just don't know why they would want to put words into my mouth, I mean I did write, direct AND star in a critically acclaimed movie.
A lot of people, especially Christians, want to put you in this box of being a Christian actor, and I don't believe in it. You do yourself and everyone else a big disservice when you start thinking about it as "Christian art." That's why most Christian art is bad. They don't put a premium on the "art."
A lot of people, especially Christians, want to put you in this box of being a Christian actor, and I don't believe in it. You do yourself and everyone else a big disservice when you start thinking about it as 'Christian art.' That's why most Christian art is bad. They don't put a premium on the 'art.'
It makes sense that it's so different from film and television, because it's so in-depth. As actors, when we're in film or television, we can have transcendent moments and we get to work with really creative and incredible people, but it's such a small percentage of your time that's about your process.
I'm free to see things objectively because I don't consider myself American, and I don't consider myself British or Indian. I'm kind of an amalgam or mongrel of a lot of different places and experiences. In a lot of ways it's been a good thing for me. It's enabled me to do what I do on 'The Daily Show.'
That song [ "Proud of your boy" ] in particular, I sing towards the beginning of the show [Aladdin], and what it does is show his wants and needs at the beginning and what's motivating him and carry it throughout the show. It gives him layers and dimensions. He's a well rounded character and it's great.
I try to do different things as much as I can. I feel like every actor, there's a limited number of tricks and go-tos. The real good stuff you can't get to unless it's something you haven't done before. So I try to make sure each thing is slightly different. Unless it's for the money. Then I don't care.
We all have choices that we are empowered to make on a daily basis, and while those choices can be limited by affordability and accessibility, we still have the opportunity to make our best choice. That best choice usually requires more effort and more thought, but, undeniably, the results are worth it.
I bought my parents some stuff. That feels kind of good to be able to do that. I got them a place in Florida. I think I'm allowed to say that - I hope my dad doesn't get mad at me. But I don't spend money on myself. I don't like myself enough yet. But the people I love, I like spending the cash on them.
Well, obviously I'm not Mark Wahlberg - I have much better abs and I look much better in a pair of Calvin Kleins but when I saw Mark Wahlberg interacting with the world, I realised that his stardom was sort of a result of the movies he had done and the publicity that he had got and the work that he did.
The last time I heard real screaming in the theatre was when I went to see a movie I did years ago, called 'Wait Until Dark.' Now, my mother was the least emotional person on the planet, but when I got killed in the movie, she stood up and screamed, 'That's my son!' At Radio City Music Hall in New York!
I had a fifth grade teacher who, as a very small way of trying to contain my class clown energy, gave me 10 minutes at the end of class every Friday to present whatever I wanted. A lot of the time, I did an Andy Rooney impression. I would sit at her desk, empty it, and just comment on what was in there.
I think there's a lot of mythos about what's required in acting. The way that actors talk about acting is generally quite punishing, and I think actors want to put forward the idea that they do all of this work because, you know, it's a post-De Niro world, when, largely, in fact, it's almost never true.
I'm just aware of what I'm thinking and feeling but I do obviously have to get that to the back of the auditorium. So there are things like projection and filling the room, and not dropping the ends of lines - technical things which are important, but I don't think they change the way I feel in a scene.
I was doing this children's theater play, and it was non-Equity. We were out of town to do it at the Kennedy Center, and it was always kind of, 'Well, the producers may have to turn this into Equity,' and that's what happened. It was kind of a silly children's theater play, but that's how I got my card.
I did a lot of research on what solitary confinement does to you, how you become acclimated to being surrounded by people again after being by yourself for such a long time. It's really a horrific thing. It's definitely worth considering it as torture. We're just not meant to be in solitary confinement.
Most people recognize me from The Shawshank Redemption, but there is this subculture of people who have collected all 13 episodes of Greg The Bunny. And I'm still close to a number of the creative people, Dan Milano particularly, who created Warren The Ape and Greg The Bunny and all of those characters.
It's so not sexy and intimate. There are 40 people in the room. There's a guy with his belly hanging out, with a boom in your face. It's really very technical. I think doing a love scene is tougher than doing a fight scene. It's so staged and you can't put light on her face and you have to hit the mark.
Jesse [James] was known as a kind of Robin Hood character and also it was known that his exploits were somewhat dubious - however, he perpetuated this myth. Our film [The Assassination of Jesse James] really takes place at the end of all that, the last year of his life, at the end of all that celebrity.
My father was a coal hewer from Goldthorpe, a coal-mining village in South Yorkshire. He played for the Yorkshire second team as an opening fast bowler - to me he was a gorgeously heroic man. He helped form a union and closed down the Barnsley seam because it was seeping gas, and saved many, many lives.
In fact, I told our dear friends, the Burrell boys, five boys lived next door to us. "Why, we don't see your dad anymore?" "Oh, yeah. Yeah. He" - I lied. I said, "He comes home at night when you guys are in bed. He gets us up and we play." I said it so much that I started to believe it myself, you know?
I don't want any sports anymore, except fighting which is the only sport I really watch - whether it's boxing or UFC. I don't know why. I think maybe it's an aspiration I didn't get the chance to explore more, but I don't think my father expected anything from me, I think it's more what I put on myself.
I'm hungry in the ways that every artist is, but I also have this extra layer. I've done a lot of things that were consciously not for money, but because I'm so convinced I'm going to die in my mid-30s, I'm like, 'That's not what's important. Doing cool stuff and having that legacy is what's important.'
With comedy, it's a combination of knowing the comedic beat was good - it made you laugh, it made people on the crew laugh. With drama, you do something deep and if your stuff was really effective, the ultimate result is silence. Silence is not necessarily... that would also be the result if you sucked.
In stand-up you can go either way. It's live. Somebody might say something in the crowd, you might respond to it. But in a movie you could be spontaneous too. But you pretty much have to stick to that story or that scene or that script, but in stand-up you can go wherever you want to. It's more freedom.
Dallas is an extraordinary place in it's own right. The first thing about Dallas that you can't get away from, particularly when I arrived, you've got no idea of the heat in this place. It's over 100 degrees, and with that the humidity is ridiculous. I mean, people don't live here, armadillos live here.
You have to go with your instincts. I remember when I was about to make "Fistful of Dollars" a big article came out that said, "Italian Westerns are finished." I said, "Swell." Then, of course, the film came out, and it did something. I'm so glad for the dozens of times I haven't listened along the way.
When I'm on stage, it's a little world I've created where I'm sort of the thing, so I have total control over everything that happens. When we're improvising, I'm with someone I totally trust. I know things are going to work out. I don't have those guarantees in life. There are no consequences on stage.
There are so many things I'd like to change in the industry. Everything from the reliance of style over substance to their reluctance to hire me for big budget blockbusters, but the thing I would love most would be if they understood people don't have to be Hollywood beautiful to be sexy or interesting.
I grew up in a small town in Kansas, so I love meeting the fans. Those are the people who spend time out of their day to watch the things that I've done, and I've gotten to do some great supernatural stuff - 'Teen Wolf' and 'The Gates' before that - so it's nice when I get to go to Comic-Con every year.
Remember this practical piece of advice: Never come into the theatre with mud on your feet. Leave your dust and dirt outside. Check your little worries, squabbles, petty difficulties with your outside clothing - all the things that ruin your life and draw your attention away from your art - at the door.
Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has confessed that until recently, he thought the 16-year-old fellow tween idol [Justin Bieber] was a female. 'I only heard Justin Bieber for the first time two weeks ago. I genuinely thought it was a woman singing. I'd never heard it before. Is it big in England yet?'
I remember seeing Aladdin when I was five or six and loving it. I looked at the big screen and said to my mum, Whatever this Genie guy does, I want to do. Mum said I couldnt be a genie, but that Robin Williams, who did the voice-over in the film, was an actor. So I said, OK, then, I want to be an actor.
When I was 11, I moved to Los Angeles to live with my father and stepmother and my half brothers. I became really close to my stepmother, and I am still very close to my brothers. My stepmother is the actress Shirley Jones, who was in 'The Partridge Family' alongside me, so we worked together for years.
Kids need role models, whether it's baseball players, actors or musicians: people to bring a little positive light into their hearts and minds. We need to be a little kinder to those people because it's not easy being that role model, looked upon as something we are all incapable of being - too perfect.