Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I was Gator in Jungle Fever, and Chris Rock played Pookie, and those showed two very different dynamics of what crackheads were. Mine was more about the family relationships. So when people sat there and got that, they can sit there and say, "Oh, man, that's my friend." Or "That's my brother." Or cousin or somebody. They empathize, or they had something that they could latch onto, in that particular movie, of my story, and go with it.
I felt a gravitational pull to the material so that there's a certain element of acting that's not really necessary. I've really liked this in foreign movies before or I've observed others working with them and I've noticed that there's a method that goes on where the actors try and get the children, like the child actor, to interact with them in a real way. It seems like you're the adult trying to get the kid to fall in love with him.
We [me,Maggie Smith and Natasha Richardson ] rehearsed [Suddenly, Last Summer] like a play for a month, and then we shot it over the course of... I believe it was 10 days. All live, basically. Long, uninterrupted takes. And for me, a lot of it is me going head to head with Maggie Smith. And anybody who's ever had that opportunity never forgets it! It's a real career highlight, and it was everything I ever thought it would be, and more.
Then, you also have that, we all have that sense of wanting to belong. We all have that road-rage, you can relate to that road-rage because you're so frustrated. The sense of frustration, the sense of getting caught, doing something wrong, all those are sort of universal emotions and you just have to make it specific to yourself and you channel this, I don't know what it is, but this inner self and then try to capture the vulnerability.
Dubai was brilliant, they looked around the world. They saw Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, Chicago, Sydney, London all ran British common law. British common law is much better for commerce than is French common law or sharia law. So they took 110 acres of Dubai soil, put British common law with a British judge in charge, and they went from an empty piece of soil to the 16th most powerful financial center in [the] world in eight years.
I've always relied on discipline to achieve goals great and small. At a young age, my father instilled a real work ethic in me - and a fear of men. I always felt like if I didn't have a natural knack for something, I could kind of out-discipline the competition as it were. So I would always work as hard as I possibly could, sometimes to my own detriment and my personal life. For me, I think will power and discipline are very synonymous.
I think The Magicians takes these conventional ideas from this Christian literature of good vs. evil and it sort of shakes it up and asks a deeper, darker question about the nature of not just humanity in the face of good vs. evil, but the challenges of everyday life. And I think there's something incredibly timely about that and incredibly relatable to anyone who's growing up. Because we're all growing up. We're all constantly evolving.
Marilyn always dreamt of being an actress. She didn't, by the way, dream of being just a star. She dreamt of being an actress. And she had always lived somehow with that dream. And that is why, despite the fact that she became one of the most unusual and outstanding stars of all time, she herself was never satisfied. When she came to New York, she began to perceive the possibilities of really accomplishing her dream, of being an actress.
The actor has to have some degree of craft, along with the talent. No one tries to laugh except bad actors. No one tries to cry except bad actors. How a character hides his feelings tells us who he is. Most people don't know that, and most actors don't do that. Therefore, there are a lot of actors who put me to sleep, that are considered good actors, but they're predictable and boring. I know how the scene is going to end before it ends.
Samuel Beckett is the person that I read the most of - certainly the person whose books I own the most of. Probably 800 or 900, maybe 1,000 books of just Samuel Beckett. By him, about him, in different languages, etc. etc. Notebooks of his, letters of his that I own, personal letters - not to me, but I bought a bunch of correspondence of his. I love his humor, and I'm always blown away by his syntax and his ideas. So I keep reading those.
After I began working, I realised there's no end line. I believe that money has nothing to do with your personal success. On the face of it, I'm the biggest capitalist of all. I have all the riches. I'm the living proof of what stardom should be in material terms. But I've never sold my soul. I've not done anything which I didn't want to do. I've not done films for money. I'm not saying this with arrogance but I've never asked for a film.
If Slumdog Millionaire projects India as a Third World, dirty-underbelly, developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations. It's just that the Slumdog Millionaire idea authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a Westerner, gets creative Golden Globe recognition. The other would perhaps not.
It as an argument between the world of emotion versus the world of the intellect. It's the idea that you can suppress a person's mind and a person's experiences, mentally, psychologically and intellectually, but you can't completely quiet them to the point of dormancy and the emotionally life a person. You still have the heart and what the heart remembers and what the heart experiences. And even that isn't important that that comes across.
The key research I usually apply that allows me to understand the roles that I take on, starts with the script in front of me, and what it offers. I try to absorb as much of it as I can, in the time that I have to study it, and I like to change things up, if I have a choice in the matter... and I usually don't. I dream on it, write about and find out who the individual is, and try to bring him to life with as much human and truth as I can.
The books I made, most of those books were made in the '80s or early '90s. I was reacting emotionally at that time; it wasn't an intellectual thing. I didn't make those things for public presentation; those were for my friends. So I wasn't doing this to be an advocate for what I'm talking about right about now. But I'm realizing I was working properly as an artist, or whatever you want to call it, as somebody that naturally was inquisitive.
I wasn't a huge fan of the comic book, but I definitely was of the cartoon series. I wasn't much for sitting around and reading as a kid, I preferred to be outside running around and playing sports, but I was absolutely thrilled to get the role of Colossus. I don't think I realised how popular the character was until I got the role and started doing some research; it was then that I really fell in love with the character of Colossus myself.
The biggest challenge for me, as an actor, is to be informed, prepared and focused, at the same time. I had to just keep on working, prepping, reading and imagining, all the way through, but the biggest challenge is always to let go of all that and just be open to others. That's what we do, as actor. We play with each other and we stimulate each other, and we have to be prepared to be stimulated by the other. That's always my big challenge.
Understand that this art has been created by few soldiers in Vietnam to escape or reach: and this is the spirit I'd like parkour to keep. You have to make the difference between what is useful and what is not in emergency situations. Then you'll know what is parkour and what is not. So if you do acrobatics things on the street with no other goal than showing off, please don't say it's parkour. Acrobatics existed long time ago before parkour.
I think you have to keep going. Otherwise, you know these fellas that say, "Boy I can't wait to retire. Boy, I'm going to be 65 years old, and I'm retiring and I'm quitting and that's it." Well, two weeks later they're saying to themselves, "What the hell am I gonna do?" And first thing you know they find themselves in a wheelchair or in a rocking chair going back and forth, back and forth, and that's the end of it. And suddenly you're dead.
Years later, you can hear a song, and it brings you back right to that moment, what was happening at that time, whether it was a relationship or a difficult time, or maybe a great time in your life, and you had that album you were listening to. Twenty years later, you can put on that song you fell in love to or your heart was broken to, and you hear that song and it brings you right back there. I think music is the most powerful tool we have.
When you write a novel or paint a picture, you have the opportunity to approach it and back off, tear up pages, write, rewrite, paint over, and come back to it. In film, once you start shooting, you can't restart the clock, and you keep moving forward, and you don't look back, and you don't go back. And that is, of course, antithetical to the creative process. It's really hard to generate a comfortable creative flow under that kind of pressure.
Humor is so culturally based that when I try to tell a joke as me being a white American, if I tell other white Americans, they'll laugh. If I tell an African American, they might not laugh. In fact, they either might not find it funny, or they might find it offensive, and I didn't mean it to be offensive. So these are the sort of little things that build up over time, just like in a marriage. You know, the little things can build up over time.
I mean you can go wherever you want with it really. No matter what story you're telling you're always representing some reality. You are always representing human beings, their fears, their shortcomings, their braveries, their doubts, their loves, their abilities, their brilliance and those things inevitably lead to bigger political systems, foreign policy and crime and religion. It's an action film. We are not taking a stance about big government.
I definitely wanted to pay homage to what he did and use his performance in the first one as a foundation. But, I had to make it my own. I couldn't sit there and try to imitate Michael Clarke Duncan. I think that would have been disastrous. I had to make it my own. I tried to take as many nuances that he had with the character and utilize them as best I could, while creating a character that was unique to me. That's going to happen, no matter what.
So we didn't get the denominations and the separate congregations really till about into Civil War time. What's happened then, of course, is now that we've had well over 100 years of this history to establish separate cultures, different ways of worshipping, and different ways of understanding theology so that when people try to come together makes it very difficult. And then, of course, social networks, you know, how do we find a place to worship?
There comes a point when you've exhausted your opportunities playing good guys. I've been around long enough, I think I'm entitled to explore a bit. But what I saw there was an opportunity to play a character different from what the audience's expectation was. A chance to take their crude experience of me - of my iconography, if you will - and turn it on its ear at an appropriate juncture in the film to be useful to the process of telling the story.
But acting is my main profession so it's about finding the right balance. I don't know how, if I went any further with the music, I would manage to do both - I would have to take time off from acting because I couldn't do both at same time. I could do six months on and six months off perhaps. But I'm really proud of the record. I've worked on it for a while and I'm really glad to finally get the album out, having done three EPs prior to its release.
The problem with success is that you lose the capacity to fail and the capacity to surprise people. So, if I'm able to surprise myself every day, I can surprise you as well. If I enjoy someone's work and they offer me their project, I do it. So what's the point of the supposed creativity? If Mona Lisa could be made by anyone, then it wouldn't have been the most beautiful painting in the world. The knowledge that you can fail can make you come first.
I'm not known as a singer, but in life I like to do things that are a bit beyond my reach to keep myself from slipping. I find that technology has made it so that we don't need to have a memory system, and as I get older I want to do things that challenge me. What could be more challenging than doing this show with a knee that's been replaced, after tearing my Achilles heel with a baker's cyst on the back of my knee? And then I have to try and dance!
I think that any show that doesn't have huge ratings, that's what you're always up against. Meanwhile, conversations are ongoing. Everything is running the way that things usually run, in these types of situations. I guess we'll find out, like everybody else. But, we don't fret about it because, really, it's out of our control. We can only step back and do our work, and therein lies the serenity. We're hoping for the best and just doing what we love.
The top group of fundraisers for Mr. Obama raised $457,834 for his 2008 campaign - and were approved for federal grants and loans of $11.4 billion, according to the Government Accountability Institute. Selling access to the federal treasury has been a great way for Democrats to raise campaign funds. Since 1989, according to an analysis by Gateway Pundit, big donors have provided $416 million more in direct contributions to Democrats than Republicans.
I never really looked at it like that, but it's true. It's weird that it's been half my life. Because I lead these two separate lives. I've got my life and Harry Potter, where I travel the world, I make films, I meet amazing people, I do press junkets and stuff. And then I go back home to Leeds, where I live, and I've got the same friends from before. I still go to the pub. I still go to watch the football, soccer. And I go shopping at my local shop.
An unreflective passion for social justice may be one of the biggest obstacles to creating peace and prosperity in the 21st century. While there are most certainly factory owners in China whom we would rightly regard as criminal in their treatment of their workers, it is very important not to confuse these incidents with the phenomenon of globalization. It is a good thing that Wal-Mart is encouraging more humane standards in its supplier's factories.
What kind of person would run for president of the United States in today's political climate? It would have to be somebody who's never really been drunk in public, who's never had an affair, who never shoplifted when they were a little boy, who never had any sort of counseling at all. I just don't know how you go through your life meeting people, experiencing everything you can, trying to absorb, and not make some of those mistakes. It's impossible.
In fact, the difference between creative and interpretive, it all starts with the writing. Then if you can get the money together to make the film, then you're in touch with the visuals and the actual creation, and the sound of what you want to mean. Of course, some directors get inspired by what people do anyway. Don't feel the need [to stick to the script]. In fact, they sometimes go "That's not what I had in mind, but that suits the purpose well.".
Certainly, from where I stand, I'm not a specialist in wildly different walks and voices. But I find as much variation and nuance as what satisfies me in what I do. So, I don't find this particularly different. He has his own peculiarities. You're probably talking about a cluster of Englishmen in suits but I've done quite a big cluster of guys not in suits as well, which I've occupied myself with. So, I don't find that this is the one that stands out.
Quentin Tarantino was talking about Ordell a little bit, and I was like, "I'm sure Ordell is one of those people who thought Superfly was the greatest movie ever made." So he cuts his hair and straightens it, but he never has enough money to maintain it perfectly. So it's kind of nappy around the edges, straight and kind of puffed up. That's why he'd always keep it in a ponytail or a braid. We were just having fun and creating a distinctive character.
It is a dichotomous time where the younger generation is perceived as free. But smoking pot is not being free. Taking drugs is not being free. I feel that being courteous and telling your dad, 'I'm going to have a drink' with your dad saying 'give me one too' is cool. That's being freer, happier and nicer. But having issues and saying that 'I am my own person, I am moving out Mom!' is not. Yes, if your mom tells you to move out then that's being free.
I have found there are real objects under in intelligent control being seen on the ground and in our skies worldwire. The unknowns have varied over the decades from 22 percent in my own civilian files, 30 percent in the University of Colorda Condon Committee scientific studies, to at least 40 percent recently revised found in the U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book military investigations. This is not acceptable, no matter who is doing the investigations.
There are some movies that deserve criticism. They want people to know that it's a great dramatic accomplishment and has some great performances in it. But, c'mon. Yes, you will have some fun if you go see 'Snakes on a Plane.' Snakes are biting people - and they're biting them right on screen. There's nothing to review. It's not 'Snakes on the Waterfront.' You don't have snakes going, 'I coulda been a constrictor.' No. Hell no. It's 'Snakes on a Plane.'
I found a movie called “Light in the Piazza.” I finally made the movie with Olivia de Havilland and myself, but initially there was no way I could make that movie, so I went to work on becoming that character. They told me they had an Italian [actor], and I said, “That’s a Cuban boy!” His name was Tomas Milan. I thought that’s the craziest thing I’d ever heard: They have a Cuban who’s going to play an Italian, and I can’t play it because I’m an American.
I remember when we were in rehearsals and we were going through it because we rehearsed before we went to Toronto, and it's more of the same. She and I had to deal with a lot of stuff in this movie and we really have to take ourselves there. It actually started in rehearsals, and just revisiting that piece of it all. Just the way Monica is and what she says and the way she looks at me, it really affects me throughout rehearsals and throughout the scenes.
It's not often that you get to read something that just feels very original for a star but also something that feels like it's more than just a movie or entertainment. Even though the riots were one of the most pivotal riots in civil rights history, especially for the LGBT community, I knew surprisingly very little about them. You don't learn about Stonewall in schools. It's a bit gross really! So it certainly felt like something that was quite important.
I'm glad they gave women the right to vote, but sometimes I'm sorry they have the right to smoke. Most women are messy about it, particularly about their lipstick. I don't mind wiping lipstick off myself, but I hate seeing it on cigarettes, napkins and coffee cups! I don't like women with all their beauty machinery showing-curlers, cold cream, mascara brushes. I'd even prefer to not see a woman touch up her lipstick, but I guess that's expecting too much.
Chess is one thing, but if we get to the point computers can best humans in the arts-those splendid, millennia-old expressions of the heart and soul of human existence-then why bother existing? to produce human art a computer would have to find, feel, absorb reality to the point it is overcome, to the point it sobs for release. A computer perhaps could replicate every possibility but could never transfer the energy art requires to exist in the first place.
Here - at this final hour, Harlem has come to bid farewell to one of its brightest hopes - extinguished now, and gone from us forever.... Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial and bold young captain - and we will smile. ...We will answer and say unto them, ‘Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever really listen to him? ...For if you did you would know him. And if you knew him you would know why we must honor him.'
There was once a great actor named George C. Scott. He was on stage in the Delacourt Theater in Central Park, where they do Shakespeare every summer, and he was playing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. At one point he took the robes he was wearing and just started flipping them up in the air, out of nowhere. And later, an actor said to him, "What was that, George, what were you doing?" And he said, "They were sleeping." You're always trying to catch them.
A good director creates a playground for actors, and lets them go. The trick for a good director is in casting properly, and creating the playroom, and then they'll get stuff that they don't expect, and can't even direct. All the audience wants to believe is that whatever is happening, it is happening for the first time. They want to see the people within the work exchanging dialogue and action in that moment. There are not a lot of actors that can do that.
Don't ever for a minute make the mistake of looking down your nose at westerns. They're art - the good ones, I mean. They deal in life and sudden death and primitive struggle, and with the basic emotions - love, hate, and anger - thrown in. We'll have westerns films as long as the cameras keep turning. The fascination that the Old West has will never die. And as long as people want to pay money to see me act, I'll keep on making westerns until the day I die.
The street is the most impactful for me really, always, and the Internet. I guess I'd like to sell some more light pieces so I can rent some more billboards; that's my only ambition in life really. Then I'd like to save up some money so I can buy a very simple wooden house, and then after that I'd like to start buying billboards. I'd like to buy a bunch of billboards in different cities so we owned them and I could give them to Occupy to tell the truth with.