Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My favorite thing about acting is being alone and going through the scripts and working on it and getting ideas and asking myself questions, looking outside myself for them and researching and getting to the bottom of something and being creative with it as an actor and how to express it in a creative fashion. That's my favorite part. And, the actual acting of it.
I've had and probably still have a lot of bad haircuts. My mom just sent me some pictures - I don't know why she did this - but she sent me some pictures of me when I was probably like 12. I grew up in the D.C. area and I used to wear a Redskins jersey just walking around. I just had kind of a bowl haircut for a long time and no sense of style or personal hygiene.
No, not really. I mean, at the end of the day, it's just a part. You just go into it, and like your life, you're walking along the street, as a really bad analogy, you step on a little stone, and it just kind of flies away and you have no idea where it's going. And then you are just trying not to drown afterwards. And that's my life. See, that was really terrible.
It's the reason why so many people left Britain like I did in the mid 60s because Britain was exactly the same then as America is today, getting ready to redistribute social wealth and it didn't work. You've seen that in places like Greece, Portugal, Iceland, Ireland where the entire country's business has collapsed, gone bankrupt. That's where America is heading.
One day [when I relapsed] I walked into a store and saw a little bottle of Jack Daniel's. And then that voice - I call it the 'lower power' - goes, 'Hey. Just a taste. Just one.' I drank it, and there was that brief moment of 'Oh, I'm okay!' But it escalated so quickly. Within a week I was buying so many bottles I sounded like a wind chime walking down the street.
The most starstruck I've been is when I met Sol Campbell when he was a Tottenham Hotspur player. I don't get starstruck by actors I work with, because you have some sort of relationship with them. Like, I worked with Tom Cruise [on Interview With The Vampire], so if I saw him again I'd speak to him as an actor. Although he might not be interested in talking to me.
Child actors become types. The cutesy type, the funny type, the dark type. Any time you're a type, your career's over. It's not been effortless for me; I've had bumps in the road, you know? I was in Dumb And Dumberer. It's not been a flawless thing so far. But all in all, I'm proud of it. Most proud of it because of the diversity. Because the genres are different.
I wasn't able to articulate it until after audience members gave feedback. And then, similarly, when we talked about the bromance being unique, I don't think Mark, Jay, and I really saw how special that aspect of that bromance was until our audience members sort of gave us feedback and let us know, "Hey, we've never seen a bromance like this before on television."
We never will have any prosperity that is free from speculation till we pass a law that every time a broker or person sells something, he has got to have it sitting there in a bucket, or a bag, or a jug, or a cage, or a rat trap, or something, depending on what it is he is selling. We are continually buying something that we never get from a man that never had it.
There's no quit in our family. Our dad was the chief proponent of that. [On the set] we were constantly telling each other, Stay true to the story, we know that we love each other, keep communication open. We knew how unique this was-you're doing a movie that really could be put out there all over the world, and you're telling this personal story about your family.
I think I can speak for a lot of people in that they would be pretty nervous about meeting Harrison Ford, and I was definitely one of those people. For me, and I think for all of us, once you get to know him, you do get on very well. He's such an amazing person and an amazing actor. There were so many young people on the set and he really pulled the best out of us.
You shouldn't speak until you know what you're talking about. That's why I get uncomfortable with interviews. Reporters ask me what I feel China should do about Tibet. Who cares what I think China should do? I'm a f***ing actor! They hand me a script. I act. I'm here for entertainment, basically, when you whittle everything away. I'm a grown man who puts on makeup.
One of the things I always believed in was my dad came to America and he was a very talented musician, but he couldn't make a living that way so he had to support his family as an auto mechanic which he also loved doing. He was also such a great dad because when I first told him I thought I wanted to go into show business, his response was okay, that's interesting.
I had the kid [on "Fences" ] who understudied me so I could stand back and think about shots so he had to learn the blocking and everything. I'd come in early sometimes, and they 'd be in there rehearsing and working on their stuff. I didn't want them to feel like, "Oh these are people who can't be touched." We're all working actors; we're all trying to get better.
I met [Gilda Radner] on the first night of filming ... Hanky Panky that Sidney Poitier was directing. And it's funny, I was in costume and makeup - my tuxedo and makeup because I'd done a few shots before she arrived, and she told me later that she cried all the way in, in the car, because she knew that she was going to fall in love with me and want to get married.
I guess the freedom - poetic freedom - because the poetic part of short story form is an attempt to say something that's unsayable about one's incarcerated existence, and it's fun to come up with words to represent that condition, and it's fun to pull the tail of absurdity and rile it up, where you giggle at what you do or you get enthralled and in the short story.
Alessandro [Michele] has really done the impossible. He's taken this classic brand [Gucci] and really turned it completely around and taken it in a direction that was so unexpected. [Alessandro and I] met and became friends here in L.A., and then we got to know each other and he asked me to do this. It was really organic and not the way this stuff normally happens.
When I go to Florida for Christmas I always take my nieces and nephews out on excursions, ... I become like a big kid again. We go on all the big rides at the theme parks or I stick them in go-karts where their feet can't quite reach the pedals. I think that if you can continue to have the child at heart you may grow old physically but you will stay young mentally.
We are witnessing a slow, steady takeover of our true freedoms. We are becoming a socialist nation, and whoever can't see this is probably hoping it isn't true. If we permit Mr. Obama to take over all our industries, if we permit him to raise our taxes to support unconstitutional causes, then we will be in default. This great America will become a paralyzed nation.
I think that's something that always enticed me about the '40s - back then, the glamour and the style - you couldn't really make it up. You just were or you weren't. You either fit in that world or you fit in the other. Things were very cut and dry. Things were simple. There wasn't a whole lot of excess or flash to be flashy; it was real flash, and real excitement.
some of my happiest funniest times have been spent in offices. Perhaps because the work was mudane, even the tiniest of distractions become wildly hilarious and wonderful. Actually, I'd say that 90 per cent of my doubled-over-gasping-with-laughther-laughing-so-much-that-you-can't-breathe-and-you-think-you-might-die laughing has occurred during slow days in offices.
You have to know everything. You have to know how to light a scene. You have to know all this technical stuff about directing. No, you don't. You can know as much or as little as you have to. Your main job is to get great performances and tell the story correctly and capture it correctly. Then it's just basically yours to complicate or simplify as much as you want.
When I was about five my dad built a stage for me in our basement. A full stage, with a curtain, a backdrop and a dressing room. There were three colored spotlights - a red one, a white one, and a blue one. Blue was for nighttime scenes, and red was for when we were in hell. If the neighborhood kids wanted to use the stage, they had to incorporate me into the play.
People would stop me in the street - my demographic tends to be the elderly Jewish women from Miami; I think they tend to fancy me as someone that would've been good with their daughter or something - and a lot of them will do the wrist-slapping thing. "Oh, you're a terrible man! Just terrible!" And I'm, like, "Well, it's just a show. I'm just playing a character."
So, you're seeing the Rolls-Royces and the Bentley's still selling for big prices. You're seeing jewelry still selling, art works at auction. There was a diamond that sold for I think 38 million, 48 million, something like that just a week ago. So prices are back up to their highs, getting stronger and more and more people seem to have more and more money to spend.
Whatever the best scripts are and you just want to play roles that you can really sink your teeth into. That's always the goal no matter if it's a good guy or a bad guy, or a comedy, or a drama. It doesn't matter, you just want something that's substantial you can sink your teeth into and that you haven't done before, something that's really going to challenge you.
I don't want to be pretentious about, "yes, I need to move in to the more dramatic roles and express myself and prove to everyone that I'm capable of doing it," it really isn't that, I think that's a bad reason to choose roles. It's more like, who would I be working with and would they be fun to do and entertaining to watch, is it an interesting story or character.
There's moments that are very personal in The Divorce. There are moments that are sort of unwatchably vulgar or intimate or pathetic. I even had this conversation with my mom. My mom saw the pilot and she was like, "I just thought that some of it seemed nasty." I'm like, "Mom. You're from a whole different generation. And yeah. There's some nastiness that goes on."
The reason that I'm here is that Patrick and I are partners and when crazy stuff comes our way we'll sit down and brainstorm and think around it just like we do when we're thinking about a scene. So, while the masters might not understand my being here, or at least they didn't at first, but they do now because we really are a partnership. If he's on set I'm on set.
What le Carré is so good at is unpicking something very specific about Englishness. That is almost part of why I think he wrote the novel. You can feel le Carré's anger that someone who has had the benefits of an English education and an English upbringing is using that privilege to basically do the worst things imaginable. There is an anger in the book about that.
I've never really viewed myself as particularly talented. I've viewed myself as slightly above average in talent. And where I excel is ridiculous, sickening, work ethic. You know, while the other guy's sleeping? I'm working. While the other guy's eatin'? I'm working. While the other guy's making love, I mean, I'm making love, too. But I'm working really hard at it.
I think people are willing to take more of a risk on an indie film, about character, etc...but at the same time, when I work on projects that are substantially bigger, in a way they do feel small. Even though the catering is way better and we actually have someone shooting with real film.... The budgets are bigger but the story still feels small, like an indie film.
Buddy Hackett [was] talking - this is Hackett, not me - about the Virgin Mary, a limerick sort of thing, and all these children and families ... the look of absolute horror. He's going on and on and on, and finally he stops. It's just total horror, and the camera's still rolling. You can hear it, sort of a grinding noise. And the director says, "Anything else, Bud?"
The way financing for independent movies goes is great. You get the money from the guy who's actually doing the distribution in France. You say, "Do you want a piece of this movie?" And he's got to sell this movie to get his money back. That's the brains of it; that's the genius of this financing. "You want Germany? Give us a million dollars and you've got Germany."
It really was not that difficult a process, because I was playing [Data from Star Trek] something that doesn't exist. So it was really based on... Imagination was the key element in that, and whatever I could think of, I could do, because there was no precedent for it. It wasn't like someone was going to say, "Well, an android would never do that." They didn't know!
I'm always looking for that place, you know, where there's no rednecks, that place where people get along, and I never find it. I went to Australia, right, and I thought Australia was gonna be a groovy, surfnoid, smoke-a-joint wombat, you know? 'G'day mate!' 'No worries!' And it's like Arkansas with a beach. It's a whole country with a 'No Fat Chicks' sticker on it.
I've always longed for the theatre and acting to be popular. No actor wants to play to an empty house. We only do it for an audience. The more the merrier. I don't make any distinction between a popular TV series or blockbuster film and doing Shakespeare. They're different, but as long as the material is good and the intention is honourable, it's all the same to me.
Growing up where I did, you met a lot of colorful characters whose business was on the other side of the law, or more likely you didn't know what they were up to, and you never would. So playing those kinds of characters now, I can draw on that. The rest of it, you can practice or learn from books. But mostly, I draw from my experiences. That's all I have, you know.
My whole childhood, that made my skin curl. I was looking for something authentic. I think that drove me into the arts, I really do. That really did it. The only other thing that made me survive, as a human being, was getting into the arts. I was surrounded by people that were very bright and they invited you in. They were gracious. So, it gave me a great education.
I had a lot of jobs, because I wanted to be an actor, and I had this bad habit of wanting to eat regularly. So, I had to make some money somewhere. I was everything from a stock worker in an Alexander's department store to flower delivery person to a messenger to a grocery clerk to a gas station attendant. I even worked in Macy's dusting off fur coats for two weeks.
My vision of a better world would be one under the control of a strong United Nations, one that truly has the support of all countries in the world. Only an effective world government could provide sufficient law and have the power to control the unboundaried destructive forces of pollution and war. I will continue to be a leader in the World Federalist Association.
So many of us have our asses watching stupid reality shows, desensitizing our brains. Like, "Wow, isn't that dumb, but I'm so entertained right now! That's the stupidest thing I've seen in my life - give me more of it!" You know what I'm talking about. I turn on the television and I'm like, "This is so bad, but I cannot get my fucking eyes off of it." It's not good.
I walk into office, which is the casting office for CBS in New York. Mainly what they cast out of this office was the CBS daytime shows. I go in and walk into this room which every seat is filled with young African-American boys and girls and they were in their teens. I went, "I'm in the wrong place. Why am I here? What's going on?"So I go in and meet Norman [Lear].
Im such a work in progress at the moment, its crazy, and life wants me on edge, I swear to you. But as long as I dont forget the past, Im cool. One must always be mindful, just like you might forget that old girlfriend who tried to slit your throat, but shes really still hot. If you remember the stitches more than you remember the pussy, youre going to be just fine.
I have faith in the pendulum swinging. Right now it's so far against the wall that it can't go any farther; it's gonna start to swing back. That's my optimism. One of the cures is gonna be getting the American people to fully wake up. All the American people, particularly young people, because they're gonna inherit this earth; they're gonna inherit what we're doing.
I was about 10 years old. I just remember the film Enter the Dragon with Bruce Lee blowing my mind on the screen and I thought to myself, "That's what I want to do for a living when I'm older." Bruce Lee was so magnetic and charismatic and held the screen so well. It's just a very powerful performance in that film. That's the first memory I have - him in that movie.
To be honest, at that point, just being so fresh to L.A., I was in the mind-set of just getting work, at all costs. But, if you take a step back from it, it's just such a blessing to be able to play somebody like Glenn. Me being Asian American, it's nice to have something to play that's not so very stereotypical. It's also nice to have somebody that I identify with.
Without love, loyalty, desires, passion, courage, dignities, faith, beliefs and all the other ingredients that go into making the human soul something so elevated that only God knows its limits, we are only shells bobbing aimlessly in a calm sea of mediocrity. ...And if you can figure that out, please write and explain it to me because you're a better man than I am.
I worked with some of the best actors I've ever worked with: Mel Blanc and Don Messick. They could play a scene against themselves. Think of the characters that Mel created, and they're as good or better than any performance anyone has ever given. I mean: Daffy Duck! Think of the specific voice Mel gave Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny or Porky Pig... It's just astonishing.
Every once in a while, someone would call me a foreigner or a Yankee, or whatever. In the United States, someone might say something, like how kids do, to point out that you're different. That would come as a surprise to me. As you get old, you either get defensive about it or you accept it and you reach out, because you realize the world's full of people like that.