Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's an institution that was born with my brother Chetan and me. I did it for him. I was becoming a big star in the late 1940s, and he needed a company to make films. So when he left Navketan, I brought in Goldie, and when Goldie left, I carried on alone. No book on Indian cinema is complete without mention of Navketan.
Never again will I allow our political self-interest to deter us from doing what we know to be morally right. Atrocity and terror are not political weapons. And to those who would use them, your day is over. We will never negotiate. We will no longer tolerate and we will no longer be afraid. It's your turn to be afraid.
I got a manager, and I thought, since I was going out on auditions, I should do this for a living. Then there was this moment on set when I realized I was having a lot of fun, and I really wanted to do this forever. I want to do different stuff, but I want it all to be just as good as this film. I want to be consistent.
What I've realized is that all of these people are so successful because they love what they do and they work exceptionally hard. No one gets successful in this business by fluke really. There are probably a couple of exceptions but most people just work so hard. They are working every day and they are doing their prep.
As a species, we're always seeking out authenticity. We're dying for authenticity. We smell it immediately, and we also smell even the slightest riff of somebody who's not completely true to who they are. We have that ability because, as a species, we have organized around stories. We tell them and we subscribe to them.
The most difficult thing is that I don't speak Mandarin and I had this experience - of working in a language that I don't understand - before and it's really horrible. Eighteen years ago, I played a mute in one film because I couldn't speak Mandarin. There was another film where I had to speak Vietnamese. It's horrible!
People quote lines to me all the time. I'm always surprised - everybody has a favorite movie, and they're always different. I'm always shocked. People stop me on the street and throw lines at me from 'Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight' and 'Deep Space Nine.' 'Shawshank' happens a lot because they play it so much on TV.
I was fortunate because my mum shared my love of film with me, so we would go to the movies twice, three times a week, and we would watch movies at home. As a teenager, instead of going out, we would have these huge movie nights in. But I almost failed drama at school. I hated it. It was all about the history of theatre.
I had heard all sorts of stories about Woody Allen's directing - directorial approach. And some of them turned out to be myth, but one of them was that he doesn't rehearse, and another was that he doesn't really direct. If he doesn't like it... he cuts it out of the movie or even replaces you. And he doesn't talk to you.
For whatever reason, that dream I had of going to Hollywood never went away. But when I got to LA at just 19 years of age, my faith was the foundation that gave me the confidence that I needed to believe that it would all work out and was a reason for the open and closed doors. Today, my faith is the center of my career.
Los Cabos has been an amalgam of many cultures that have been coming here. There have been beautiful Jesuit missions for example, in many places around this area. The towns are incredible. But there is a very strong Mexicanized culture here that exists because people from different parts of Mexico have come to live here.
For the last episode [of Downton Abbey], you'll need some handkerchiefs. I needed handkerchiefs reading it. It wasn't because it necessarily moved me while reading it, but it was the experience of reading it when I realized it was the last time I was ever going to be reading one of those scripts. That was quite terminal.
Interestingly, this character [Doctor Nash] is probably closer to me than somebody like the evil Sir Godfrey in Robin Hood or Lord Blackwood who wants to take over the world in Sherlock Holmes. This is a character that's English, he's based in London, and so it's closer to me than a lot of stuff I've been doing recently.
When I first started getting into acting, I was doing improv in acting class, and I had done a serious monologue and everyone was cracking up laughing and I went to the drama teacher and said I don't want to be the class clown anymore, I want to do serious work, too, and they loved that, and so I started mixing in drama.
I meet so many people. I want to be genuine and open with everyone, because when I was young and just starting out, I remember I was around people who were successful, and I thought that some were kind of cool or off-putting to their fans. It always really bothered me. So I think I may sometimes go too far out of my way.
Love is when there is no denying "it"... that magical, elusive feeling that really seizes us and takes us from the inside. To me, it's in the corners of my niece's little smile, or when I see my mother is calling me from Australia, or when I hear my husband's footsteps in our hallway. It's in the mundane and in the epic.
I'm not a model; hence I don't see the reason to have a six-pack abs. I can pull off a tough and rugged look of a cop in 'Dhoom' series without taking my shirt off. Cops don't have to move around without a shirt to flaunt their machismo. What makes the character of a cop stand out is his attitude and not his six-pack abs.
Motion capture is exactly what it says: it's physical moves, whereas performance capture is the entire performance - including your facial performance. If you're doing, say, martial arts for a video game, that is motion capture. This is basically another way of recording an actor's performance: audio, facial and physical.
The wonderful thing about 48 fps is the integration of live action and CG elements; that is something I learned from 'The Hobbit.' We are so used to 24 fps and the romance of celluloid... but at 48 fps, you cannot deny the existence of these CG creations in the same time frame and space and environment as the live action.
The level of backlash [for the True Detective] was kind of fascinating and not fully shocking because I know what the world of the internet is and how it's a platform to project their greatest anger and frustrations. But it's also a place where people can wax lyrical and be effusive in their glowing fondness of something.
One of my biggest influences of all time would probably be one of my soccer coaches, Coach Darlington, from high school. He was always trying to get me to push myself really hard. No excuses. I always hated him, but it paid off. I think that's what life is all about... when you push through the hard stuff and it pays off.
The next film I have is called Miles Ahead, which is about Miles Davis, during a five-year period in his life during which he's struggling to figure out which direction to go musically and in his life. I play a record executive who's there to try to get Miles to collaborate with one of my clients. I'm excited to see that.
I wanted to remain a bachelor from the beginning, but I got married thrice, and I don't know why I did it. I think it's not easy to live with me because of my impatience and busy schedules. Sometimes my mother is unhappy about a few decisions I have taken, but it is completely personal, and I don't want to make it public.
If there are actors that are brilliant, people often wonder whether it's intimidating working alongside them, but it really isn't. It just makes you up your game and want to be better. Rather than cowering in their shadows, it's very encouraging to see someone who's incredible; it makes me want to be a bit more like them.
It's been a long comeback. Things were pretty dark for me. But I have a faith now, and it saves my day. I was angry with God for a long time because I was unhappy with me. I hadn't learned to make the distinction between God and my parents. But there's a peace now. In the end, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.
When I was in lower school, I graduated from fourth grade, and the principal gave us a summer assignment to take a 30-minute reflection period every day. And, of course, there were no cell phones at the time. She said to just think. And that's lost. It doesn't exist anymore. Just imagine being on a couch and just thinking.
You consciously look after yourself, whatever that may be to you, whether it's going out for a few drinks and a bit of dinner, or just hitting the couch and watching TV, or going to the gym or yoga class. Just being aware that there's a potential for you to be in it and respecting wherever you find yourself is good enough.
It's tough, you know, when you're thin and you don't put on muscle mass that easily. What you've got to remember is that you really have to eat a lot and you have to work your body out with basic exercises like deadlifts and squats and the bench press - the workouts that are basic in form but work a large group of muscles.
In the time between when you first read a script and are offered the role and the time when you begin to shoot, I really love putting in the time and work on that and getting a solid backstory to a character and researching all that I can about what that person does for a vocation or their upbringing or where they're from.
I started a nonprofit called The Pegasus Fund, and we take top-performing students from underserved communities, and we commit to sending them for three summers to a nonacademic, holistic summer camp as a means to help them acclimate socially, geographically, spiritually to pilot secondary schools that they hope to attend.
I dont think any actor has the luxury of knowing exactly what scripts are going to turn out well and what ones arent. It would be wonderful to have that particular skill, and maybe people like Tom Cruise have it more than most, but you go into each project hoping that a good, if not great, film will come out the other end.
Now it's a hard time in every business with the current economic situation, so being an actor where you're seen in different parts of the world is gold because it means that people in other countries will hopefully see your movies and like them, which means more money to make other movies. It's a hard time in movie making.
That's a big fear, right, and when I talk with black pastors, the same thing: If we try to have this move towards interracial congregations, whites will just dominate then. There are so many more of them, and they're used to being in the position of power. So they'll just take over, and we'll lose the one thing we do have.
I would often take this bus and go to a nearby village where I had hordes of animal friends. I was hardly around four or five years old then. The conductor was so used to seeing me hop on to the bus and get down at the same place, that he never asked any questions. The strangest part is, he never asked for a ticket either!
I knew that I wanted to be an actor; how to go about it was the question. I went to Australia for my studies; from there I told my dad that I also want to do a course in performing arts, but my father refused. So I completed my studies and came back. But I kept poking him, saying that acting is something that I want to do.
When I don't feel like working out, lifting weights or doing serious cardio, the best thing for me to do is just go on the treadmill and walk. I walk and listen to music and 10 minutes will go by, then 15, and then I'll speed up a bit. Once my blood really starts flowing, I'll get a second wind and then I want to work out.
I don't use any techniques; I'm not trained to be an actor. I just enjoy working in films. It's more instinctive rather than anything else. I don't do the calculated rehearsed kind of approach, and I hope that I can continue that because I believe that instinct is much stronger and greater when you are performing on camera.
On land, you can walk away from people, from unpleasant situations. But when you're on a ship for 14 months with 49 other people, if you don't resolve your issues it literally could mean - and this would be an extreme circumstance - the sinking of the ship. You learn a lot about other people. You learn a lot about yourself.
There is this thing called Actors Access, which is run by the breakdown services. What they do is they put up casting notices that are available to everyone. Because there's thousands and thousands of actors and there are student films and grad student films and, sometimes, some small independent projects that are on there.
If I had auditioned for 'Merlin' on magic alone, I don't think I'd have got it. Like any kid, I probably had a magic kit, but it's not something I ever pursued. I've never watched a magic show like David Copperfield or used him to base my character on, but I really like David Blaine and Darren Brown. They are doing wonders.
When I won the Oscar, I fell into that mind-set that this is a precious role. People everywhere were shouting, 'Show me the money!' I just didn't want anything that could parody the fact that I was like a tagline in a movie. So when Steven Spielberg offered me 'Amistad,' I said no; when 'Hotel Rwanda' came along, I said no.
I'm quite curious and excited about seeing a new script for 'Blade Runner.' If, in fact, the opportunity would exist to do another, if it's a good script, I would be very anxious to work with Ridley Scott again; he's a very talented and passionate filmmaker. And I think it would be very interesting to revisit the character.
It is the spectators, the people who are outside, looking at the tragedy, from whose ranks the skeptics come; it is not those who are actually in the arena and who know suffering from the inside. Indeed, the fact is that it is the world's greatest sufferers who have produced the most shining examples of unconquerable faith.
Every film, obviously, everyone starts out aiming at making it good, and in the end, filmmaking is really fragile. Making a film is like building a house of cards on the deck of a speeding boat, or playing chess on train tracks. Every opportunity feels like that; it's the one artistic field that's unlike most of the others.
Lifes That Way was an extraordinarily difficult book to write, because it wasnt written as a book. It was written as a journal of events that were happening as I wrote it, without the space or time either to digest or analyze those events and without the hindsight and peace that writing in the aftermath would have provided.
I am a twin, but my brother and I aren't identical, so it's not such a big deal. But when you share bunk beds and birthdays and a womb with someone, you have a special connection. It definitely feels different from the relationship I have with my other siblings - my twin and I are more connected. Jacob is a conservationist.
Playing college soccer was going to be the top of my athletic feats. I wasn't going to the Olympics. I was a decent player, but it's because of hard work, not because I was Freddy Adu. I wouldn't have a medal from the Olympics if I wasn't in a chair. I wouldn't have gone to the Olympics and experienced the whole atmosphere.
When you're playing the part of a saxophone or a trumpet player, both of which I have done, it would be nice to be able to play like John Coltrane, but you can't. Your job is to do something else. And I'm not sure what it is, but I don't think I'd be acting Niels Bohr any better if I went and studied physics for five years.
The really good thing about 'Sleepy Hollow' is you have no idea who's going to die when... But then equally, we showed in the pilot several people can come back to life, so you have no idea who's going to come back. Death means very little in our Sleepy Hollow, so expect more surprise deaths and more surprise resurrections.
You think the politicians that run my country and your country don't have guns in the schools their kids go to? They do. And we should be allowed the same rights. Banning guns is like banning forks in an attempt to stop making people fat. Taking away guns, taking away drugs, the booze, it won't rid the world of criminality.