Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's harder to be funny if you're handsome than if you're very normal-looking. It's just more relatable. You're the underdog. I mean it's funny to see people struggle, and you don't buy that Brad Pitt is struggling, you know that guy could be the most skill-less guy in the world, but if you look like that you will be fine for the rest of your life.
I used to go trick-or-treating all the time. When I was young we had the plastic mask with the rubber band that would cut your face, and you couldn't breathe and it was really sweaty! I had the Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man. I used to love the Incredible Hulk, and then one year I had the great idea to be Mr. T, and that was an awesome costume too.
Frankenstein feels like an ancient tale, the kind of traditional story that appears in many other forms. It appeals to something very primal, but it's also about profound things, the very nature of life and death and birth - about, essentially, a man who is resisting the most irresistible fact of all, that we will be shuffling off this mortal coil.
I started doing cocaine to get through interviews, 'cause people wanted to know a lot about my personal life and I wasn't prepared for a 60 Minutes interview every time. Doing bumps I was able to get through the day, but then I would smoke weed to calm me down - it was the only way I could get through the day without people noticing I was doing it.
I left school my senior year to do a play at the Alley Theatre in Houston, Texas. Then while I was doing a play, I auditioned for Juilliard. I got in over the summer, and they told me, 'You have to graduate high school to come here. You don't need the SATs, but you do need to graduate high school.' I finished over the summer through correspondence.
One thing a girl has to have is a good sense of a humor. I'm a really laid back guy who can find humor in just about anything, so my girlfriend would need to be a little like that too. She doesn't have to be a big jokester, but to me finding humor in things and not taking too much too seriously is a way of enjoying life, so that is important to me.
I had two jobs coming out of school: I did a play, 'The Great White Hope.' I played the boxer Jack Johnson. And I was the lead in this indie film. Then I moved to Los Angeles because New York was cold and it was really too quiet for me at that time. I was out of school; I was hungry. The auditions were trickling in, and I was antsy and ready to go.
At a earlier age, I was kind of into a pretty large scope or range of music from Hieroglyphics and the Hobo Junction guys and all that to like a lot of stuff that was in New York like Diamond D, Nas, Brand Nubian, of course Biggie, OC, Organized Confusion, Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Digable Planets, who I just saw recently, and they killed it.
It took me until my 40s to realize the five essential areas that are important to at least have a real dating chance. Obviously, beyond the physical compatibility, which is where we all start in junior high school, I think that intellectual compatibility and spiritual compatibility, emotional intelligence, and financial compatibility are important.
Every time I do a movie, I'm reading the script, or if it's something I have coming up, I'm reading the script, and I just spend hours and hours and days and weeks and months going over the script and just writing a lot of different ideas down, finding a little dialogue or just coming up with ideas for scenes and moments and all that kind of stuff.
I don't think that people generally realize what the motion picture industry has done to the American Indian, as a matter of fact, all ethnic groups. All minorities. All non-whites. People just simply don't realize. They take it for granted that that's the way people are going to be presented and that these cliches are just going to be perpetuated.
On the one hand, we're constantly told about recycling and cutting back, and on the other hand we have to buy the next gadget that comes along three weeks after the last one you bought. It's absolutely insane. We've been suckered into buying and buying and upgrading and upgrading. We're being given two very different mantras at the moment, I think.
I take every role seriously. Personally, I never look at any role as Michael White. I've done that my entire life. I've never excluded myself because of color. It's never been part of the radar, when I look at anything I do. The majority of the roles that I've played have had very little to do with being black. It doesn't matter what color you are.
What I like about my character: Luke Cage is a person first and foremost. We do have other black superheroes, but he's important because he's touchable. Luke has moments when he has to try to forget his pain, but then, unlike the rest of us, he's also able to channel that frustration into fighting bad guys. Real martyrs aren't trying to be martyrs.
A life sentence without parole protects public safety while sparing us the barbarity of killing our own. It teaches our children that violence will be punished, but not by emulating the violent. This seems eminently more consistent with American ideals than continuing to share the killing stage with some of the world's worst human rights violators.
For me, university was a bit of a rebellious streak. I love teachers but I'm inherently a bit of an anarchist and don't trust you because you're my teacher. Somewhere around my second or third year, I realized as an artist that it's up to us to choose our path, and there's nothing wrong with being given many different tools to put in your tool bag.
I've never been able to write for myself. I was doing a lot. I produced The Green, I wrote it - I didn't see myself in the world of this film. I'm sure there are elements of dark corners of my psyche that found their ways on screen; you didn't need my mug up there. There was enough of my essence in the story as it plays out without me acting in it.
I love 'Donnie Brasco' and 'Days of Thunder,' so after I did 'The Skulls,' I was like, 'I want to be either an undercover cop, or I want to race cars!' Universal came to me with a newspaper article about street racing in L.A., and I was like, 'Are you kidding me? I grew up doing that right off Peoria in Sun Valley.' They asked if I wanted to do it.
I've had some wonderful ideas for getting the dominating going. I've got some extremely subtle advertising slogans that should get the public behind us. Things like "Vote for EL Wisty and lovely nude ladies will come and dance with you." It's a complete lie, of course, but you can't afford to be too scrupulous if you're going to dominate the world.
When I was a kid, the idea of gettin' paid to paint your face... listen, I grew up in Ossining, New York, a nice little town by the Hudson, and nothin' ever interested me except being your usual high school big shot, which I was an' loved it, played all the sports and goofed around, always out on the street with the guys, everything was funny t'me.
It's not great if someone gives you sort of bland praise without giving you clear direction and say, "This is good, let's try it like this." I have worked with someone who seemed quite inarticulate and just would say, "That's good, that's good." That's very frustrating because - it's nice to know something is good but you know it can always change.
When I started out, Jay Leno used to say you're not as good as you think you can be until at least your sixth year. I was like, what the hell is he talking about? 'Cause I was in my third year, and I thought, 'I got this.' I kept videos of myself performing, and in my fifth year I watched my third year and realized he couldn't have been more right.
I was happy to spend time with my family, get to know my daughter, who was born during The West Wing. I missed her first words. I missed her first steps. I'd leave work before she woke up and got home after she was asleep and didn't really know her. So it was important for that reason to reintroduce myself to the family after all of that hard work.
There were times at the start of it all when I would be standing, terrified, in front of the cameras and people I considered 'real' actors. I had no idea what was happening, what the guy with the clipboard did, or if people in the studio were looking at me because it was their job to look at me or because they thought I was making a mess of things.
When I was 15, I went on a cricket tour of Zimbabwe with my school. My defining memory of it was stroking a semi-tame lioness at a game reserve. I grew up on a farm, so I felt I had an affinity with animals, and when it put a paw out, I thought I'd connected with it. But its claws came out and nicked my leg. Then I did the most stupid thing: I ran.
When my dad hit 40, he quit everything. He sold the house and bought the boat and went off sailing the world. I was on that boat from age 12 to 18. We didn't actually go around the world. We went pretty much from France through the whole Mediterranean basin. We went to Ireland first. We also went to coast of Africa, South America and the Caribbean.
I always wished that I was gay, that I was just 100 percent gay - for so many reasons. No. 1, that means I would know who I was. No. 2, it would be a lot easier for me to be accepted by people because I wear wigs and dresses on the Internet, and I'm feminine and all these things. It'd be so much easier to be just like, 'Yeah, I'm gay.' But I'm not.
And just as I was climbing into that first-class seat, and wrapping myself in a blanket, just as I was adjusting my pillow behind my head, and having a sip of that champagne, and just as I was bringing down and adjusting my Thai purple sleep mask, I had an inkling. I had a flash. I suddenly thought I knew what it was that had killed Marilyn Monroe.
I have tremendous respect for fighters and I always tell people that boxing in movies is one thing but when you get into the ring for real, even the worst heavyweight in the world is going to murder you. You've just got to appreciate the pain and the suffering and the glory and skill that goes into what they do. That's why I love the sport so much.
The basis of Ronald Reagan was his humanity. I might not have agreed with his politics, but my research - all I read about him and by him - was that he was revered because he had a big heart. He was very religious and sincere. He believed that one spoke truths because, otherwise, people would know you were lying. None of that even applies to Trump.
My microphone went out in the 2009 Tony Awards. It was my big moment, and I was so excited to perform and lead the cast; I sang 'Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat.' Every actor dreams of standing front and center on the Tony Awards, and I start to sing, and you hear this crackling. I had no idea what to do - were they going to stop a live telecast?
[Captain Fantastic] it's a great story. It's one of the better scripts I've read, ever, as far as being great from beginning to end. It handles a variety of characters. You have six children who all stand on their own, they're all individuals. And it touches on a very real issue, which is the lack of cohesion and communication in America right now.
Unity is the only way in which the people of this country can overthrow the fascists, communists, capitalists, and all the other assholes who claim running a representative government is so difficult. The emphasis has been taken from the Bill of Rights and placed on the type of interpretation of the Constitution that best suits the people in power.
I proceeded to prove everybody right as to how bad an economics student I was by failing as an assistant manager in every theatre I went to that hired me, both as an assistant manager and as an actor. I lost money and tickets, and I couldn't keep track of anything. So eventually they fired me from assistant-manager jobs, but kept me on as an actor.
I'll go to a restaurant where I've never been before, and someone will say, "I don't have anything big for you to eat." I used to be a little salty about that, but at the end of the day, what they're saying is, "I know who you are. I watch your stuff." What's better than that? Gratitude is the attitude. That's the thing. What am I being pissy about?
When you improvise on the spot, people are very reluctant to have soft moments or quiet moments or sad moments because they're trying to fill up the spaces. So they always go towards, "How come you're late?! You're supposed to have my shirt ready! You call this a dry cleaner?!" That's what happens. That's why improvising on the spot gets very dicey.
I just remember Kathy Bates getting on the stage and "The Oscar goes to Anthony Hopkins." I looked around, because I really thought Nick Nolte would get it. I really thought Nick would get it. I was very surprised. It was neck and neck with Nick Nolte and myself. So I really was expecting that to happen, and I went in there without any expectations.
The advise my dad gave me: "To know is to study." Get some training under your belt, so that nobody what somebody asks you to do, you know how to handle it accordingly. I learned so much while working, because I developed a solid work ethic in school. Whereas, a lot of my friends had no work ethic; and because of that, they're sitting at home today.
I played a lot of serious parts in a lot of TV movies and early miniseries but what happens is that you get sort of locked into "Oh no, he's a serious actor." Well, I was a serious actor for nine years or 10 years and then I get into comedy and everybody said, "Oh no, he's funny. He can do comedy," and then all of a sudden, you're just a comedy guy.
The truth is, anybody that becomes famous is an ass for a year and a half. You've got to give them a year and a half, two years. They are getting so much smoke blown, and their whole world gets so turned upside down, their responses become distorted. I give everybody a year or two to pull it together because, when it first happens, I know how it is.
I don't even think about the money when I consider roles, I turn it over to my agency. Money will come. I respect it but I don't thirst for it. I wish Americans thought more like Europeans when it comes to money and work. They take time off, they do what they love. We think work is the most valued commodity. Really the most valued commodity is time.
If I was being perfectly honest, which I'm not going to be, I think the movie touches on a lot of things that we all went through... the first kiss, which was more than a first kiss for Harry [Eden], and those electrifying moments when you're a teenager that form who you are as a human being. I think those, for me, are what Baillie captured so well.
It doesn't matter if you look a million dollars but everybody has their flaws. So that's why it had to be that way. He was living the life, he would stay out for three days probably, get drunk and do whatever he was doing and then hit the gym for two days. But that's the craziness of that lifestyle - you're damaging yourselves in more ways than one.
At Princeton I wrote my junior paper on Virginia Woolf, and for my senior thesis I wrote on Samuel Beckett. I wrote some about "Between the Acts" and "Mrs. Dalloway'' but mostly about "To the Lighthouse." With Beckett I focused, perversely, on his novels, "Molloy," "Malone Dies," and "The Unnamable." That's when I decided I should never write again.
I love doing animation - mainly because you get to over-act. They're always saying "more," "louder," "bigger," "huger" and you just turn it lose. Plus, doing animation voiceovers, I have learned so much, and it's always good in your career to discover something you didn't know, and to learn to do things differently. So it's a fascinating experience.
I'm not a big Hollywood star. I'm an actor. I'm called a star. That's not what I am. First of all I'm a human being; my profession is acting. People give you titles. They say you're an up and coming star, then they say you're a star, then they say you're a washed-up star. So I don't get caught up in what I'm called. My job, my profession, is acting.
You flip the switch. Flip the switch and go into work mode. You're a professional, so be a professional. You can take care of your problems later, but you still have to go to work. You still have to make things happen. One bad day could turn into a bad year if you're not careful. Or, a bad rest of your life if you're not careful. Because of one day!
I don't make comparisons between any movies. I compare characters. All my actions, performances, all my films, they are driven by the characteristic. If I'm playing a cop, then I give him a particular style - I may not know that style, but as an actor I have to be responsible to do your homework and do your research and training and stuff like that.
I'm a long way from being evicted [at the age of 14], but I'll never forget it. I'll never forget the feeling. I'll never forget my mom crying and I'll never forget the thought I had: 'Well the only thing I can do is just go build my body,' because the men who were successful that I knew of - Stallone, Arnold, Bruce Willis - they were men of action.
Something like the alleyway scene, where it's like a mini one-act play and you run the whole 18 pages of it, it's so much easier to get lost in it. That's why actors love doing theater so much, I guarantee you. It's refreshing to be able to do something where you don't have to be stopped every two seconds, and you can just play it out and it's done.