Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I actually think film and TV are sort of the same thing now. To me they're all motion pictures. There's a camera, a script, other actors and a director. Doing a sitcom is a little different. It's kind of a hybrid, half movie, half play, presented in a proscenium fashion - the camera's on one side of the line, the set on the other, the audience sitting behind the cameras.
I love, first of all, reading and discovering what the common perception is and then trying to figure out... well, how does your life cross over into that character, or what's an angle on this that might challenge the status quo? It's just a great journey as well as an education. You're constantly being educated - it's like I'm back at school and making up for lost time.
I do think that the imagination you create yourself when you're reading, to create the tone and the accent of the world, is an individual accomplishment that someone is imposing upon you by listening to them read it. Because you're listening to their interpretation, and their emphasis would probably be different from the one that your brain makes while you're reading it.
You have to eat, all day, and you have to have the right fuel to get you through different physical and mental obstacles that fighters have to get through. Just dealing with the diet alone becomes an all-encompassing, fully immersive experience. And then, there's the physical side of it, having to put your body through everything required to make you look like a fighter.
Also to get to see over the course of time how they change, and how Andy [Hertzfeld], regardless of how he's treated, still maintains a friendship with Steve [Jobs] over the course of time. Enough to want to show up and cheer him on. It says a lot about his character, and also that he cares about Steve. Yeah, I find it moving, and I find it a lovely thing on Andy's part.
It was actually a lot more helpful to have Calvin Hart, a cop, as my template. He was also my technical advisor on Shaft. This time, I kinda got to go to Jersey City with him, and hang around, and watch him interact with other cops, people in the projects, and see what it means to be him. People call him 'Big Daddy' and he's this larger-than-life hero to a lot of people.
In a hospital, there's not anyone who's generally trying to do you harm. You're generally given a backstory about what happened to them, but not about their life, so you get to work on saving their life. But you know whose lives you're saving overseas, in the Army, to a certain degree. You know whether's it your guy or a bad guy, and it's generally not anybody in between.
Animals give me more pleasure through the viewfinder of a camera than they ever did in the crosshairs of a gunsight. And after I've finished "shooting," my unharmed victims are still around for others to enjoy. I have developed a deep respect for animals. I consider them fellow living creatures with certain rights that should not be violated any more than those of humans.
Stop trying to figure it out. I love puzzles, but when I'm done putting together a puzzle, I feel accomplished, and then I wonder, "What's next?" Then I go start another puzzle. Life is a puzzle that I feel like we'll never fully put together. And I like that because, ultimately, I don't want to have life figured out and then wonder, "What's next?" That seems scary to me.
We were all expecting to finish [Downton Abbey] after Series 1, actually. And then, it got extended to Series 3, and that's when two of our much loved and much missed friends left. And then, it was going to be done with Series 5, but Julian Fellowes said, "I'd like to do one more." So it's been a series of extensions, rather than wondering how much longer we can go on for.
And different traditions stress different - so then there's that. I talked to an African American who says before she goes into an interracial church, she sits in her car and she listens to gospel music to get her fill, and she goes into an interracial church where they don't do gospel music, and she's ready to accept the other sorts of ways of worshipping. So there's that.
I think I've had my taste.I got to work with Sam [L.Jackson]. I can say I did it. I had my shot. I'd love to do something with [Robert] De Niro or Dustin Hoffman or Al Pacino. Those are guys I grew up watching. That would be wonderful. Now that I've gotten a taste working with a bona fide movie star, I think I'd be more prepared to go head to head with some of the big boys.
The cool thing about making a Western is that people want to be in them. You rarely get the opportunity. With horror movies you are always trying to convince them. People in horror are always worried it's going to be this schlocky thing, and you're always trying to convince them that it's not. With Westerns, people immediately react with, "Oh, I've always wanted to do one."
We knew from the beginning the level of commitment needed. We felt honored to work with Stanley Kubrick. We were going to do what it took to do this picture, whatever time, because I felt - and Nic [Nicole Kidman] did, too - that this was going to be a really special time for us. We knew it would be difficult. But I would have absolutely kicked myself if I hadn`t done this.
We're charlatans in a way, we're magic people. Part of the behind the scenes stuff is to loosen you up, to make you feel that you are experiencing this. This is my style, I did it in Looking for Richard, too. And I figure, if I can weave it into the actual play and get the audience interested, like the robes going up and down, they'll pay attention long enough to consume it.
There are no rhymes or reason, actually. Having said that, you know, cause there are people who are absolutely single-minded about their process and they can still come up with great work. But (what) I enjoy and it's the same, I suppose, as I became more of a family man, I enjoy, I enjoy an atmosphere where it, you know, doesn't have to be about conflict to get good results.
I do have the ability to explore life and to be over the moon at the smallest thing - a few pints and a craic in the pub and I'm in heaven. But I have a melancholy side to me as well. Acting allows me to feel things, it kind of buys me human experience. And I don't mean this as acting as higher cause, because it's not, but it does kind of have a higher awareness emotionally.
[After playing Indiana Jones and Han Solo] hero image concerns me a little, though not for my sake. All it means to me is that I have a responsibility not to get caught doing anything terrible and thereby jeopardise my credentials. Not that I do terrible things, like running over dogs or anything like that. It just makes you think twice before you say or do things in public.
I certainly think so, and I argue so, and I give talks on that. Are there risks by putting people together? Absolutely. Is there value in the black church? Absolutely. Is there value in having immigrant churches? Absolutely. But if we don't have congregations gathering with people of different races, what we're doing is we are redefining racial division, a racial inequality.
Nothing in life is unfair. It's just life. To the extent that I had any inner turmoil, I had only myself to blame. I also thought of my two boys and what kind of example I hoped to be. I would always want them to take charge of their own futures and not be paralyzed by the comfort and certainty of the status quo or be cowed by the judgment of those on the outside looking in.
There are guys I admire. Like Jimmy Stewart and - a more modern example - Tom Hanks. They managed to do it and have a really high standard for their work, but at the same time they remained incredibly classy and well-regarded personally throughout the process, which I thought was rare and kind of cool. And I'm trying. I try. I haven't thrown any TVs out the hotel window yet.
I was sitting on my own in a restaurant, when I saw a beautiful woman at another table. I sent her a bottle of the most expensive wine on the menu. She sent me a note: "I will not touch a drop of this wine unless you can assure me that you have seven inches in your pants." So I wrote back: "Give me the wine. As gorgeous as you are, I'm not cutting off three inches for anyone.
I am all about breaking barriers and challenging myself, that is why everything I have done on my resume is different. I have never played a cop again, and I have never played a boxer again since I played Muhammad Ali. That was a challenge, being darker than him, and the film won Best Television Movie and I was a part of that. I was in Mississippi Burning, which won an Oscar.
I have found a certain type calls himself a Liberal...Now I always thought I was a Liberal. I came up terribly surprised one time when I found out that I was a Right-Wing Conservative Extremist, when I listened to everybody's point of view that I ever met, and then decided how I should feel. But this so-called new Liberal group, Jesus, they never listen to your point of view.
In the film industry you never really know if all the various ingredients will come together - sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. As an actor, you don't have much control over those things. It's a director's medium in that sense. All you can really do is minimise the risks of being involved in something that might not work and look for something that also suits you.
['John F. Kennedy] movie is based on a massive best-selling book, which is always helpful. And then the script was amazing and answered my question, "Why this? Why now?" And the "why now" is that it's 50 years since the assassination, and the country needs to have and will have a conversation about that. And the "why this" is the construct, which I think is sort of ingenious.
Obviously my own work comes from a conceptual art tradition, but I love the graffiti artists, and I feel spiritually closer to them than to most contemporary art; they make the city a free space of diverse voices and we shouldn't get all cynical about them just because Banksy made some money. I collaborate sometimes with Krae, who is an old school east London graffiti writer.
What I discovered with acting is that you step out of your own personal life and you connect with characters that are not you and you try to understand their journey. I have three Chihuahuas, but I'm not a father. I can put myself in the position of playing a father on a TV show, by paying closer attention to my friends that have kids and by spending more time with my nephew.
The way I see the job, my definition of it, is to create characters to the best of your ability and then fit into what's trying to be accomplished in the general framework of the film. I think that's whether you're doing this- even if you're doing musical theater. That's what I think an actors job is. I don't know. I like to think what an actors job is is to create characters.
Real spiritual journey in life is the discovery of self. I think once you take all the religious bullshit away from Jesus Christ, it's saying it's about this journey of discovering who you are, and what's really important in life is simply love. That the journey of civilization, the journey of understanding, is forgiveness, is empathy. And that's what humanity is striving for.
For the only time in my career, I came in and met Tony [Richardson] for the part - I did not read, I just met with him - and in the middle of the meeting, he told me that I had the part [in The Hotel New Hampshire]. There was never, "Well, thank you, and we'll have my people call your people." There was none of that kabuki that goes on now endlessly for even the smallest role.
I met [ Samuel L. Jackson ] for the first time on The Today Show. He came out of an elevator. I was promoting A Mighty Wind and he was promoting something else. He said, "I hear we're going to be working together." I said, "On what?" He said, 'The Man.' I hadn't heard his name mentioned before. I made a few calls and found out he had the script and was interested. That was it.
With each one, I love working on the story and the characters. The stunts, each time, we keep pushing ourselves harder and harder. And they are stunts, so there's always a danger in doing them, but fortunately, I have not had a problem. I have not missed a day of work, ever, in my career. I'm always there early. And I train very hard, and we prepare very carefully for each one.
I have a piano in my living room that I mess around on a little bit and when I asked Len if I could find a piece of music, I went through a **** load of classical music to find something that I felt had a certain urgency to it, but also with a hint of melancholia and maybe a sense of longing. I found that which is public domain and I had a piano teacher to go through it with me.
I got the script of Imperial Dreams from my agent. I was at home having a full English breakfast and the email came through in my junkmail. Funnily enough, I was paying a T-Mobile bill, so I was able to see the email. After that I was engaged in the story. I was scared - fearful - because the story doesn't just penetrate one level in terms of narrative; it goes that level after.
When I work, I'm the actor. I'm going to do my job. I'm not going to direct the movie. If I wanted to direct it, I would direct it. I wanted J.J. Abrams to direct Mission: Impossible. I work with people that I respect. I expect them to do their jobs, and I will do mine. And I am there as a producer to help in any way, but no one makes a movie by themselves. It's a collaboration.
This film [ Blue is the Warmest Color] actually is the result of me talking with my producer Vincent [Maraval]. I gave him a bunch of ideas and then Vincent helped guide me and develop this particular film. I enjoy that rapport to have somebody else help guide me in my choices for the next film. The poetic way of looking at it is which project is going to choose me as a director.
When I was 16 was just thinking about the future and - it sounds so stupid - but what my goal was going to be in life. I guess I was thinking about girls too. No girls liked me. That was bothering me. I was thinking about my height - I had a growth spurt right before high school and then that's when sports coaches started coming up to me, but that's when I had this artistic turn.
Life is painful sometimes. It touches everyone, so you may as well try to look for other answers and find peace. So, it is difficult to write those types of things because nobody wants to tell sad stories. I think that I'll always tell stories about human hope. I would love to be able to tell somebody, "It's okay. It's all right. Be a good person." That's what my job is, in life.
I've always loved animals. I've never lived without them. As long as I can remember, I was bringing home strays. When I was five, I brought home a stray kitten I named Tiger. This was my first rescued animal. It wasn't until I became an actor, and then injured my spine, that I discovered that these animals were actually very therapeutic and helped me to cope with my chronic pain.
The idea is that Jodie Foster is with her child and she's going back to New York from Germany with her husband's body. She loses her child on a plane, and you think, 'How can that happen?' There's no record of her having brought a child onto the plane, and the captain is left wondering about whether she's telling the truth. You never really know if she's telling the truth or not.
I had been at Comic-Con, and I have the same manager as Bob Morley, so we ended up at a Warner Bros. party. I met Jason Rothenberg for the first time, and he's a fan of Black Sails and Shameless and some of my work, and was like, "Hey, we've been having trouble casting this part. I think you'd be perfect for it, if you'd be willing to come up and have some fun for some episodes."
I think about the period of, like, the '70s and early '80s where nobody had money to make big movies and there was no CGI or anything like that and people had to get super creative. And then, you know, when you've got somebody who can paint you any picture on a computer and you get hundreds of millions of dollars to make a movie, its almost like the creativity diminishes somewhat.
My parents' loss was compensated by the birth of my son Aryan and daughter Suhana. I believe they're my parents. In comparison to them, I behave childishly. My 13-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son behave like my mother and father. They're not my weakness. I love them a lot and give them a lot. I'll give them so much that by the time they are adults they wouldn't want anything.
I had started out with the intent to make a love story and something not so grave or so dark.So I went into this saying, "I want to do a love story, not to be seen with rose-colored glasses, but not as heavy." As it turned out, it surprised me the place where it led actually was something so painful. I identified so much with them that I experienced a lot of that suffering as well.
The talented actor needs craft. When you do a stage play, you do it once each night in chronological order. In a film you're going to wind up doing a scene 15-20 times, just by the nature of the process. If I tell you a joke once, it's funny. The more times I tell, the less funny it is. How do you get to the point where you can laugh again? You also may have to cry again and again.
I never meet a church that wishes they didn't do it. I never meet a leader that wishes they didn't do it. They will all say, to the person, it's hard. It's difficult. It comes with complexities and confusion as you're trying to go across cultures, and you don't understand, you didn't mean to offend somebody but you've offended somebody. But they will all say it just does something.
Silicon Valley, "the largest legal creation of wealth in history," was built largely by unprofessional amateurs using math, sand, and the institutions of freedom. The Soviet Union had the greatest mathematicians on earth, and plenty of sand, but without the institutions of freedom their brilliant mathematicians were not empowered to create those devices that are changing the world.
I think the media's primarily an interesting backdrop - a fertile backdrop, in which we can discuss a great deal involving the human condition. We're not trying to lecture the media on how it should be doing its job or lecture people on who they should be voting for, but it does provide an incredible backdrop on which we can paint a lot of pictures and open up a lot of discussions.
I'll wait to see what the film [The Lobster] is, but it's set in a contemporary world, in America, there are hospitals and diners, parks, things that we will recognize and experienced ourselves but yet there's this similar kind of uneasiness through all the interactions and all the things that take place. It was unnerving reading the script. I kind of felt nauseous after reading it.