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History and social sciences were my interests. I was always interested in knowing how societies get organized, why there is rich and poor divide, why there are classes. I was never apolitical. I think we are all political in a way. Politics decides our day-to-day life.
One indie film does well, for example a 'Bheja Fry,' that gets money for another 20 indie projects. But as soon as the first 8 projects release and flop, out of the 12 remaining ones, six will never take off, three will remain incomplete and the others will be shelved.
The other day, a doughnut shop in Portland called Pip's Originals tweeted me telling me that they named a doughnut after me called the 'Dirty Wu.' It is a cinnamon sugar doughnut drizzled with honey and Nutella. It was so good. I just won the Oscar in the sci-fi world.
As a person navigating the waters of public scrutiny, you are often unable to hold on to personal heroes or villains. Inevitably you will meet your hero, and he may turn out to be less than impressive, while your villain turns out to be the coolest cat you've ever met.
Someone who'll bring some normalcy into my life and help me stay in touch with reality. That is something I'm curious about. There are so many actors who are married to people from non-film backgrounds, and their marriages are successful. I'm tired of dating actresses.
My first audition was for Terrence Malick's 'The Tree of Life.' These casting directors came through Texas, and they recruited somewhere around 10,000 kids to come and audition for this movie. They sent me a letter in the mail, and I went and auditioned for this movie.
I think we can be very narrow-minded in this country; you see something that someone's done and immediately want them to do the same thing again - but if they don't, they're criticised for not doing the same thing again, but if they do they're just repeating themselves.
Very few movies remain in public memory as landmark films and I want to see whether 3 Idiots will be up there with some of the wonderful films that have come out of this country...Hopefully, we'll come to know in a few years whether it can become one of the great films.
Evil Dead" needs a very specific home. Movies are mostly unrated, but on television who the heck was doing that stuff? And now the doors opened a little bit with companies like Starz. They were the only suitor that was going to let us have content that was unrestricted.
When you see my performances, even people that you might have known, like Nicky Barnes in 'American Gangster,' you have to get over the fact that I look like Cuba Gooding, Jr. But once you find truth in the performance, if I'm doing my job right, you believe everything.
I am not doing comedy because the genre is successful. If that was the case, I would have done a run-of-the-mill comedy film. I set my own trends. I like to give something new and different to my audiences. I want to do the kind of comedy that has been missing till now.
You can only lead by example, and you can only say it might be better for you if. But nobody can do anything until they're ready to do it. So you can sit down with a strong-minded young man of 24, as my son was at a point, and say now listen, this, this, this, and this.
I love making the backstory for myself. I think it's important. Every part I play, I work on the backstory. If it's fully written out in the script, or there are intimations of it in the script, fine. If not, fine, no problem. I'll fill it in, or I'll create what it is.
That really sets great directors apart from good directors: their ability to make you feel like you matter, even if your part is much smaller. That's one thing I found with most of the great directors I worked with: They all have that skill. Not everyone takes the time.
My mother, we were a very poor family. When I was a kid, we would be in our little room, and there would be a knock on the door almost every night with a hobo begging for food. Even though we didn't even have enough to eat, my mother always found something to give them.
In New Jersey, judges have ruled that a same-sex couple or a single person applying to adopt must be given the same place in line as a married man and woman. I think that's bad for kids. This makes me homophobic? I'm in show business. Half the people in my life are gay.
Laurence Olivier said if you have ambition to be a serious classical actor, you must be as fit as an athlete. For me, the breakthrough was going to live in California. I exercised. I drank less. It was one of the things about California that had a positive impact on me.
I had had some successes in the '90s, always made money, but the truth was I was like a man pushing a boulder up a hill. A huge, heavy, difficult boulder made up of some career mistakes, projects that didn't meet expectations, and twenty years of being a known quantity.
I'm actually very ordinary, except people get to pay their money to come watch me work. The same way that we go to McDonald's.. we don't care about the guy behind the counter, but if he was doing something special, we'd pay our money to go watch him cook that hamburger.
I don't like dates. If you meet someone that you like then meet them out somewhere. That's good because that's comfortable. I don't like the feeling of going to pick someone up that I don't know that well at their house and then take them to kind of a formal restaurant.
Every film for every actor is a make-or-break film. I believe every film has the power to break you or make you. So, an actor will treat every film like his last film. That's the way we need to work, and that's the way you can drum up that passion needed to do good work.
In filming you're waiting. You're waiting for lights. You're waiting for people set things up. And when you're not waiting, you're repeating. And neither is conducive to spontaneity, you know. Comedy makes you very, very neurotic because you think, I - but did I nail it?
I've worked on all sorts of things, like the sci-fi stuff for Vin Diesel, where the script is numbered and is in unphotocopy-able colours and your name is stamped into every page. And it doesn't really help because it creates a false sense of specialness about the thing.
I think all my characters haunt me. Especially the real-life ones, like Master Chief Carl Brashear, the Tuskagee Airmen. Every time I see a military person, it gives me such a sense of pride but also a sense of responsibility to project excellence when representing them.
I am not good at first or second impressions, and you have to spend some time with me to know me. Also, I don't want to put my best foot forward and prove something, as that is not me. I would rather be me and have you like me for who I am, instead of being someone else.
I was asked to go to Cannes to present Amores Perros. And little did I know that this film would be huge. I saw it for the first time in Cannes, and it was the first time I'd seen myself on such a big screen. And it had a huge impact on me - it was the strangest feeling.
In general, I hate films that are overtly either very masculine or very feminine, you know? The same way that I don't like a war movie about soldiers smashing people's heads. But a chick flick I like would be Cassavetes' movies. 'A Woman Under the Influence,' 'Husbands.'
John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola and Oliver Stone - those guys are consummate filmmakers. They believe that you don't talk it, you show it. So when I find a role now, I try to find a visual way to tell what the character is about rather than trying to speak about it.
If people recognize me when I'm out in public, I'm very nice to them. I'm very nice to people even when they don't recognize me. I don't even mind if people come up to me while I'm eating dinner, but if they recognize me while I'm having sex, I refuse to sign autographs.
The powers-that-be understand that to create the appropriate atmosphere for war, it’s necessary to create within the general populace a hatred, fear or mistrust of others regardless of whether those others belong to a certain group of people or to a religion or a nation.
Everything too fast is not good but everything too slow is also not good. You need balance. That's why I like martial arts: it always tells you how to control your body, your mind, your heart. Balance. Balance can keep the world's peace. I think that's a very good thing.
What has been happening more lately - of course, I also put in my bio, I say I do the voice of Goliath, but some people go - you know, I say something, and it's a funny thing when you work in this business, people will talk out loud in front of you like you're not there.
I often ask people if they would like to give their organs when they pass on, and they say "Well, I'm not so sure, I don't know." And I said, "Well, would you accept one if you needed one?" "Well, yeah, sure." And I say "Well, there you go - where do you get them from?".
I don't like to sound immodest, but I believe in what I can do. Sometimes it's been frustrating because I haven't gotten to bat; if you're on the bench, and an unimaginative person doesn't see you as right for a certain role, you don't get the chance to hit the home run.
At 12 years old in the dangerous world that I was in, with a very difficult home life, I found the stage was the safest place to be. It was predetermined and predictable - and furthermore you got to be someone else. All the problems only began when you left the building.
I think that every show on television has its place. I think Married With Children or, I don't know, The Nanny... some people want to go home, turn on the TV and be able to iron their clothes or grab a sandwich. Come out and catch a joke and not have to follow the story.
I'm Volstag and what you see is what you get. He's a bon vivant lover of life epicurean goodfellow. He's a god, which helps. He's full of life. He reminds me very much of Falstaff. There's a wonderful innocence to him and the steadfast loyalty of a big Saint Bernard dog.
Politics is too partisan, and sometimes patriotism is cast aside. Patriotism is honor and love of your country and your brothers and sisters. With politics I get the impression that it's all about what's good for the party and not necessarily what's good for the country.
One of the first pieces of advice I was ever given, on my first job was, you should always buy something to treat yourself to say well done for getting the job! However I've not followed on that through yet... I've always wanted a tattoo, something to mark my experience.
So I am hoping my second outing to your wonderful university turns out differently, because it would be highly embarrassing if I said, “Good evening Yaleites” or “Yalers”, or whatever you guys are called, and got stuck at Yaaaaa…. That wouldn’t make for much of a speech.
Professional motorcycle riders that are pretty young because it's a young man's sport. You're like out of your prime if you're in your mid to late 20s. Which is awful but a lot of guys still do ride into their late 20s. I rode. I just didn't do any of the jumps or races.
Working on 'Newsroom' has given me an appreciation of the struggle that you go through on the 24-hour news cycle. The people who are legitimately attempting to deliver honest news are really facing a tough, uphill climb that's a lot harder than any other time in history.
I think what traditional studios probably don't understand is that it's a genuine advancement in the actor's tradition. And you know, the tradition and craft of acting. And it's the latest step. You know, we, we tend to find forms of delivering stories that fit our times.
Every week a tsunami rips through poor towns and villages all over the world. It claims 25,000 lives a day, 175,000 a week. It sweeps children from the arms of their mothers, robs hundreds of millions of any hope for the future. That tsunami is hunger. Help us end it now.
Just driving I just was in a car on flat ground and I couldn't make it go. Having ticked driving and taken three driving lessons, I just was unable to produce any motion whatsoever under perfectly normal circumstances. I think we've all been busted on driving, and riding.
I like actors - such as Margaret Rutherford and Peter Lorre - who aren't afraid to over-act like real people. When I take a job, I can always come up with ten different ways of doing the part. But I'll always choose the flashiest one. You've got to dress the window a bit.
Nobody sees the same movie. I'm sure there are people who saw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and thought "Finally a gay movie about men who really care about each other. Thank God!" That's not what I saw necessarily but I don't think any two people see the same movie.
These 'Supernatural' conventions are such a great time. The fan base is like none other, and I'm sure I'll never experience a fan base that support is the same with - their kind of unbridled decency towards the actors makes me not have to worry about going into the crowd.
I behave differently in different situations, and I'm slightly unstable and insecure, which I think are natural conditions of what I do. And I have a weird ear. Whatever I hear, I emulate. When I was a kid I did impressions: Forrest Gump, Rain Man, really big caricatures.
If you're afraid of death, I would say, either fight for your life or come to grips with the fact you may not make it. And in doing that there shouldn't be bitterness. There should be a celebration. There should be an understanding of how lucky you are. That's how I feel.