Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My mom's a children's television writer, so I was involved and around from a very young age. When I was eight, I did my first film with Rachel Ward and Bryan Brown, who are a quite well-respected Australian producer-director duo, and that just changed my whole perspective on what I could do in life and be.
I greatly appreciate that people would like to see me have one more match or comeback or, 'Daniel Bryan got cleared, so why can't you?' I will never be cleared. Mine is a completely different injury. He had neck issues, but it wasn't his neck issues that retired him, actually. It was the concussion issues.
You do sometimes watch performances and just think, 'I may as well give up. I won't reach that. I may as well give up.' But then there are other actors you watch and just think, 'Oh my God, yes, I want to try and do that. Try and be like that'. And Bryan Cranston is someone who I'd like to try and be like.
I'm sorry to bang on about it because I know everyone is, but Bryan Cranston in 'Breaking Bad' is remarkable. To see him switch from 'Malcolm in the Middle' to suddenly become Walter White is incredible. It's a) nice to see an actor given that chance, and b) great to see him really take full advantage of it.
I was working with Bryan Cranston in 'All the Way.' We were about to make an entrance together - I was Hoover, he was LBJ - and he says to me, 'You should play the brother in 'Better Call Saul.' I was like 'What?' and it was time to go on. I'm doing the scene, and I can't think of what Hoover's supposed to say.
We had a show called NXT, and Daniel Bryan was my rookie, and I was his pro. And the object was for the pros teach the rookies what it's like to be a WWE Superstar. As soon as that hit the Internet, the Internet thought it was absurd: 'How dare WWE put Daniel Bryan as Miz's rookie? Daniel Bryan should be the pro.'
Bryan Cranston's advice to actors, it's my favorite thing, and it changed my life. He said: Don't go into an audition to get the job, go to share your work. That was so liberating. You read it, interpret it, embody it the way you want to play that person and embody them with your whole heart and soul for those 20 minutes.
One of the things that I share with Bryan Becket is this hole in my childhood memory. There's about five years of my life that's virtually gone. I've thought about it a lot, and I've come to the conclusion that it might be for my own protection that those memories are gone, and maybe I don't want to dredge up those things.
When I started as a pro at United, I played alongside Bryan Robson in the A-team and later in the senior side. With Bryan, it didn't matter what level we were playing or which one of his team-mates got kicked. Within five minutes, you could guarantee that the opponent in question would be in a heap on the floor, courtesy of Bryan.
I did a movie with Christopher Reeve when I first came to L.A. called 'Switching Channels.' I asked him if it was weird to be Superman. He said, 'You know, George, I've fought against this whole Superman thing, but one day I realized, 'Hey, I'm Superman.'' So, at some point, I just started saying, 'Good for me, I'm Bryan MacKenzie.'
When I saw Bryan Singer's 'Usual Suspects,' I knew how it was going to end because I'd seen 'Scary Movie.' Which is not the preferred order of things, but that's how it is because my childhood was 'Home Alone,' 'Matilda,' 'Batman Returns,' 'Jumanji,' 'Secret Garden,' 'Jack,' 'Mrs. Doubtfire,' 'Titanic.' Only family films from the '90s.
Growing up in Georgia, my dad was a farmer and we worked in agriculture, so we were always looking up at the sky, checking if rain was in the forecast. That always set the tone for the mood in my household, whether we had rain coming in or not - we knew the crops would be good and it was going to be a good week around the Bryan household.
