Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I very classically would go into manic phases, which were as dangerous, if not more so, than the depressed phases, and I think I'd come up with the best ideas I ever had, and then the next day, I'd look at them and be like, 'This is nonsense,' because it was born out of a manic episode. What a waste of time.
I definitely had those moments, like any actor, when you get anxious and think, 'When am I going to work again?' But I would feel that way even when I had every offer in the world coming to me. Then I became a father and I felt a little more of the anxiety that came with the responsibility of being a parent.
I have this theory about words. There's a thousand ways to say "Pass the salt". It could mean, you know, "Can I have some salt?" or it could mean, "I love you.". It could mean, "I'm very annoyed with you". Really, the list could go on and on. Words are little bombs, and they have a lot of energy inside them.
It's very bizarre though when you get hired and then the director will say, "I know how this goes." And you're thinking, "Wait a minute, I thought that I was doing this" but basically what they really want, especially if they wrote it, is they want you to do it as they imagined it. It's virtually impossible.
Laurence Olivier said in an interview once that when he plays a tragedy he always aims for the funny parts, and the other way around. Because in a comedy you look for what's serious. I think that's true. Sometimes things are really funny if you're absolutely earnest. If you're really serious, it's hilarious.
I first came to London as a musician, and when my group broke up, I did 'Guys and Dolls' at the Watford Palace theatre. After that, Ned Sherrin found me and brought me to the West End to do one of his shows. The work went from strength to strength, so I thought: 'This is where the world wants me; I'll stay.'
I guess I've played a lot of failures, which is a Huston quality, I guess. I love losers, though, and have never met anyone who hasn't been one sometime. I'm always looking to understand them, and my father had an extremely keen eye to be able to dissect and bring that forward in the way he told his stories.
After the writers' strike, I came back with my tail between my legs and apologized to everyone. I had been telling them I was going to leave, and I said, "I'm never going to leave," and that I'd stay with them as long as I can. And I really enjoyed the last two and a half seasons of Numbers more than before.
Once I started working as a professional actor, it was like, 'Bye-bye waiting tables, bye-bye bartending, bye-bye all the cliched jobs actors do.' But after a year of not getting work, there's this really difficult conflict, like, 'Do I have to go back to being a waiter when people recognize me from a show?'
Some people have heard of The Method, which originally goes back to Stanislavski... he gave you six major pointers whereby you became that character and tried to fool your mind psychologically. That's it in a nutshell. Daniel Day Lewis is an example of somebody like that who stays in character between takes.
It's ironic, really. Guys should be excited that I got Kristen Bell. If Brad Pitt gets Kristen Bell, it's like, 'Well, of course he did.' With me, it should be, 'Oh good, a normal-looking guy got her. Maybe I'll get me a Kristen Bell.' But guys hate my guts for always dating women I have no right to be with.
It's pretty crazy. I was thinking about that today, how 'True Blood' has penetrated so much of the cultural zeitgeist. It's truly amazing; it's incredible! The cover of 'Rolling Stone' is major. What's next, the cover of 'Vanity Fair?' When I'm in a 'New Yorker' cartoon, then I will feel like I have made it.
We used to get 27, 28 minutes to do a story in, and now they're lucky if they get 18 or 20 minutes. So I don't think they can really do a beginning, a middle, and an end anymore. There's an awful lot of one-line jokes; almost every line is a punchline. It's not the same, but there's still good comedy around.
The lack of diversity, specifically in genre films and the superheroes our kids grow up watching and emulating, they can't really identify with. When you see the same thing, over and over again, and it seems not to speak of you and your heritage and your culture, it leaves you out of this world a little bit.
I think we are all interested in end-times ideas and also in the current climate that we are all living in, where money is a little harder to come by, things continue to get expensive; gas prices are not too far from people's heads. There are more and more people. Human society's going to have real problems.
The man who is gloomy, taciturn and lives in a world of doubt seldom achieves more than a bare living. There have been a few who have groaned their way through to a competence, but in proportion to that overwhelming number of souls who carry cheer through life, they are as nothing - mere drops in the bucket.
Mind you, physical training doesn't necessarily mean going to an expert for advice. One doesn't have to make a mountain out of a molehill. Get out in the fresh air and walk briskly - and don't forget to wear a smile while you're at it. Don't over-do. Take it easy at first and build on your effort day by day.
We run around so much - with the best intentions: I want to save the rain forest. I've gotta clean up the oceans. I've gotta save the dolphins. All worthy efforts, but if you're not centered and you don't have the serenity in your life you need to accomplish that task, you're not going to do a very good job.
Most of the best writing, the most creative writing, the most interesting, the most out-of-the-box kind of stuff, is being done on cable, you know, and on the computer. I mean, whatever it is, Amazon or Netflix or something. Because they're just willing to take chances, you know, and there's a market for it.
The question that comes up a lot is, if you had the chance to erase your memory of something specific, what would you erase? And my answer has always been, I wouldn't erase anything, personally. In some ways, I almost wouldn't want to erase anything from the public consciousness, either, for the same reason.
I've been really lucky from eight years old to continue doing what I do and continue to love it. I've been able to travel all over the world. I've had experiences at my age that a lot of people haven't. So, you know, I've missed out on certain things, but in other ways I've gained, so it balances itself out.
Until film is just as easily accessible as a pen or pencil, then it's not completely an art form. In painting, you can just pick up a piece of chalk, a stick, or whatever. In sculpture, you can get a rock. Writing, you just need a pencil and paper. Film has been a very elitist medium. It costs so much money.
If there is a blues song, it just goes in one ear and out the other. But other than that, if it stays with you and when we are all 90, we're going to look back at those songs, and it's going to be emotional. And when someone plays it, and you know it, and you're going to go, "I know that song and I love it."
Television is what we call the long form of storytelling, where we tell stories over thirteen, twenty-two, or twenty-four hours. Miniseries is an eight-hour form of storytelling, and film is a two-hour form. Each and every one of them are important to me, because they're a different modality of storytelling.
I think my children have presented one of the biggest lessons so far in my life. It was only when my kids were born that I realized just how much I'd been living my life worried about what everybody thought of me and, even more strangely, worried about what I imagined other people might be thinking about me.
Somebody once told me that if you laugh at a George Bush joke, or you send an email cartoon to your friends that makes Bush look like a fool, you feel like you've done something significant. But really, what have you actually done? Just expressing contempt for your leaders doesn't really accomplish anything.
When I was on Saturday Night Live, I was furious at some of the choices that were being made. None of us are all happy about every choice that's being made, but that's another part about being there for a while. You start seeing why they do it, and you've just got to try to get your punches in while you can.
I've had enough of being a gay icon! I've had enough of all this hard work, because, since I came out, I keep getting all these parts, and my career's taken off. I want a quiet life. I'm going back into the closet. But I can't get back into the closet, because it's absolutely jam-packed full of other actors.
When we'd suggested doing it, the Theatre Royal management had said, 'Nobody wants to see Waiting for Godot.' As it happened, every single ticket was booked for every single performance, and this confirmation that our judgment was right was sweet. Audiences came to us from all over the world. It was amazing.
Some directors hand over portions of their movie to their head of department to the point where it's like, "I'm not going to talk to you about the costumes, but I'm going to let you talk to the expert." Rather than, "You want to talk stitching, let's talk stitching. You want to talk grade of leather? Let's."
The only thing I know is that no one ever sat in a therapist's or a psychiatrist's room saying, 'My parents just loved me too much.' The only thing you can do is love them and be around. Kids don't really care what your car is like or how big their house is. All they really care about is that you are around.
I loved the book [The Adderall Diaries] I optioned it, I think some years ago. But there's a lot of different threads in the book. It starts off as one thing, where he's trying to cover this murder trial, and then his own life starts to impinge on that, so it becomes something else. I found that fascinating.
With Outlook bikers in Australia, if you've got a little emblazoned thing that's got 'one percent' on it, that means you're one percent of the population and a dangerous criminal. If it's '99,' it means you're kind of a nice recreational biker. If it's 'zero percenter,' it just shows you're a total deadbeat.
I've said this before, but I've always felt more comfortable playing the guy who thinks he's the hot shot or thinks he's the greatest and is so far from it, you know? The misguided character. That's always more interesting to me - especially with a comedy. I've always felt inside more like a character actor.
In my own life, I find myself doing some task - driving or playing golf - and having a conversation with my mother or father, who are both deceased. I don't know if that means I'm mentally ill, but I suspect lots of people do it. And when I hold that conversation, different images of my parents appear to me.
Don't underestimate your own strength. To persevere. To make it through the most difficult of times. And, JUST as importantly, don't underestimate your ability to help someone ELSE during THEIR most difficult times. Sometimes all it takes is a kind word, or gesture, to help someone make it through their day.
A part of being an actor is I people watch. I like to observe their behaviour, watch their reactions on the street and see how they talk to each other, and that's impossible when they are looking back at you. I used to enjoy taking the train and watching people in their own minds, struggling with themselves.
And the whole Oscar thing, that is just surreal: you spend months and months doing promotion, and then come back to reality with this golden thing in your hands. You put it in the office and then you just have to look at it sitting on the shelf. And, after about two weeks, you go: 'What is that doing there?'
Whether I'm performing or directing, I'm aways thinking about rhythm; sometimes it's nailing the right rhythm, and sometimes it's intentionally breaking the rhythm. Those two things are what make something funny or not. How long a shot is and where you put the camera are all part of that rhythm of directing.
One of my favorite artists is Tom Waits, whom most people think of as a wonderful singer-songwriter and a great poet. I certainly think of him that way, but I also know him as a terrific actor. You know, that persona that he puts on when he's doing his music comes from being an actor, figuring out a persona.
but can everyone simply choose the path he loves? someone has to take the ordinary jobs. all i know is, that worked for me. and it didn't work for other people i know to get a so-called safe job, because there's no such thing anymore. the only thing that stays constant is the idea that people have to escape.
I remember lying on the floor of my room, staring at a black-and-white television for most of the '80s - watching 'Diff'rent Strokes,' 'Facts of Life,' 'Silver Spoons,' Saturday morning cartoons, and 'Murder, She Wrote' while eating an insane amount of Stouffer's French bread pizza. I was sucked into it all.
I had begun my professional career when I was 9 years old at the Cleveland Play House, and it was a very specific, real theater sort of like, you know, in England and the Berliner Ensemble - very devoted people. And I thought the theater was the greatest place I had ever been, and that's what I wanted to do.
I think I was scared of the drag thing, as a lot of gay boys are. It's sort of knocked out of you in junior high. I wouldn't find guys who were very feminine attractive. Then, doing 'Hedwig,' I got to be man and woman, really butch and really femme at the same time, and I realized, this is kind of the ideal.
If it's a low-brow bawdy comedy, it's got to stand the chance of succeeding as such. If it's an intellectual piece, a drama, and so forth. And of course, once you've determined the level of the piece, do it the best you know how. And then don't make concessions. To audiences, or to pursestrings, or whatever.
It's funny: I've always had the analogy of a snow globe, that Hollywood is a snow globe. No, it's true. If you shake it up, you can look at it and really enjoy it. But don't ever go in. Don't ever buy into it and be like, 'I deserve all of this!' because it can go away at any time, so just have a lot of fun.
I grew up with this crazy upbringing of living many places and always being the new kid in town, not like a service brat where you're always going to school with other new kids in town. I was constantly arriving in small towns and going to school with kids who'd been together since they were in kindergarten.
He [Mark Webb] is very savvy, technically, he's shot so many videos, he knows how to get what he wants. The surprise, of course, is that he's also an extremely humanistic story-teller. He's obsessed with story and character, and not just making it look right, which is a double-thred that's rare in directors.
You try to go with something that's familiar to people and that way they can jump on board with what you're trying to do basically. I only mimic people that really have like interesting voices because it's really hard to mimic like someone who just talks regularly like me like there's nothing fun about that.
For a period of time, I carried cameras with me wherever I went, and then I realized that my interest in photography was turning toward the conceptual. So I wasn't carrying around cameras shooting stuff, I was developing concepts about what I wanted to shoot. And then I'd get the camera angle and do the job.