Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Obviously, with 'The Room,' I wasn't on set thinking 'I'm going to be Daniel Day Lewis' playing Mark, but explaining how I even got involved in the movie shows how we all get stuck in situations as actors - and this one ended up being one of the craziest.
I still think about the first time I met Lennox Lewis, and he took the time out to talk to me, and he showed me different techniques. I'll never forget. Lennox was one of those guys that set the standard. He's a hard act to follow. But I love a challenge.
We didn't know anything about comedy duos - Abbot and Costello, Martin and Lewis - we didn't know anything about that. Kim Fields showed us a tape of Martin and Lewis and their old shows and they come through the curtain so we started doing research on them.
My wife and I have this discussion all the time. Her primal influences are J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald. Mine are Rudyard Kipling, Edith Nesbit and T.H. White. So, we have certain structural differences in form and content right off the bat!
If you look at the people who make up the Bravo landscape from Jeff Lewis to Rachel Zoe and Padma Lakshmi and Tabatha Coffey and the 'Millionaire Matchmaker,' these are very strong personalities that people love to watch and that you... don't see anywhere else.
Postwar America was a very buttoned-up nation. Radio shows were run by censors, Presidents wore hats, ladies wore girdles. We came straight out of the blue - nobody was expecting anything like Martin and Lewis. A sexy guy and a monkey is how some people saw us.
Over the years, I've come to realize that writing 'I Ain't Living Long Like This' was an exercise in combined musical influence, mostly that of Hank Williams, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan - artists no one has ever heard of.
The negative cost of Lewis and Clark entering the Garden of Eden is that later expeditions regardless of what they were intended to do, later expeditions did not deal with the native peoples with the intelligence with the almost kindly resolve that Lewis and Clark did.
Being around a couple good tight ends in my history, both in Philadelphia and Carolina, namely in Chad Lewis and then in Greg Olsen, you see how that helps a young quarterback whether he becomes a security blanket, he can turn a five-yard completion into a 15-yard gain.
But, I enjoy music from lots of people. And you also have to also remember that I grew up in a household where people like Fats Domino, Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Earl Scruggs, and so many others were at mama's house. So, I heard everything growing up.
When Little Richard used to stand up and play it was just fabulous, and Liberace had the candlesticks and the rings and the gift of the gab. The piano's is the most ungainly rock' n' roll instrument of all time but those two people transcended it, as did Jerry Lee Lewis.
I think Jerry Lee is sad. As a musician, he was far more talented than Elvis Presley. Everybody down in Memphis knows that. Elvis became a movie star because he was beautiful. Not that Elvis wasn't talented, but Jerry Lee Lewis was incomprehensibly talented as a musician.
I really love the Olympics: Daley Thompson's back-flip, Derek Redmond's father helping him finish the 400m after his hamstring snapped at the 1992 Games in Barcelona, Carl Lewis, Michael Johnson, Sir Steve Redgrave - childhood memories are flooded with these moments and idols.
I distinctly remember watching Daniel Day Lewis in 'My Left Foot,' and my parents were discussing the fact that he's an actor. To me, it was a foreign concept. I was like, 'Someone is pretending to do that? That's so awesome!' After that, it just stayed in the back of my mind.
John Lewis inspired countless Americans across generations with a life dedicated to service and getting into 'good trouble.' He had a vision for a better America, shouldered the weight of change, and put his own safety on the line so that others could live with dignity and grace.
Lewis Carroll, you see, wasn't really interested in telling an exciting story. Well, he wasn't interested in things like cause and effect or a linear narrative. It's surreal, it's absurd, it's wordplay, it's satirical, it's analyzing itself, it's funny, it's an enormous challenge.
Historically, Hollywood comedy has arrived in skinny envelopes. From fence post Buster Keaton to herky-jerky Jerry Lewis to wiry nerve-bundle Woody Allen to hung-loose Richard Pryor to whippy contortionist Jim Carrey, its comics and clowns have tended to be sliced thin and bendable.
Yes, there were piano bands and great rock pianists, from Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard to Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, and Elton John. But something about the electric guitar speaks of more than music - it epitomizes and gives voice to the rebellion, power, and sexuality of rock.
It doesn't get any more underground, conscious or indie than Macklemore, Ryan Lewis, but because they got a couple of really big pop hits, actually some of the biggest pop hits that hip-hop has ever seen, people are missing that part of their story. People are not counting that blessing.
I admire actors that consistently challenge themselves and play a wide range of different roles. Every actor has a reason for being an actor... it's boring to play the same person over and over again. People like Daniel Day Lewis, who completely transform time and time again, I look up to.
Black women fought for the right to vote during the suffrage movement and fought again during the civil rights movement. The rote narrative in the press of the civil rights movement is truncated with the briefest of histories of men like Martin Luther King Jr., Jesse Jackson, or John Lewis.
When I finally discovered the 'Sports Illustrated' swimsuit issue, I browsed through archives and saw a picture of an incredibly stunning model, Damaris Lewis. Her images inspired me, and I imagined being in the magazine myself. Never in a million years did I dream it would actually happen.
When 'Twin Peaks' happened the first time, I was a stage actor in Seattle. I was called in for an audition for this pilot, and at that time, it was called 'Northwest Passage,' and nobody knew anything. I thought, 'Oh, okay, Lewis and Clark.' And from that moment, I fell down the rabbit hole.
I remember the first time my friend Colin Lewis, who used to be a judge with me on a show on MuchMusic called 'disBAND,' told me, 'I think I just found your next favorite artist to adore.' He sent me The Weeknd, and he was completely spot on. The Weeknd is literally on every playlist I have.
If I had the gift of Jerry Seinfeld, of Bill Cosby, of Lewis Black, these instinctively brilliant comic minds, then you go that route! But you gotta know your limitations. I'm more of an actor, more of a process guy. I did Tom Snyder, just as Danny Aykroyd did on 'SNL.' I did it in the club.
I was raised with 'Laurel and Hardy' and 'I Love Lucy' and Jerry Lewis, and I just loved it. And I had a friend in high school and we would just laugh all day and put on skits. You know, it's the Andy Kaufman thing or the Marty Short thing where you're performing in your bedroom for yourself.
When people say Jerry Lee Lewis invented rock n' roll, they forget Little Richard. People talk about Elvis Presley and forget he was singing black music. I don't blame Elvis. It was the music business figuring it could make more money from this music if it weren't presented from the original source.
I was reading C.S. Lewis with my mom, and she was pointing out that he was dead, and I'm like, 'What do you mean he's dead?' We were in this world he created, and he was gone from the Earth. Yet in those black marks on a white page, his imagination lived on, his voice lived on. That is so miraculous.
I initially thought 'Lewis' was a terrible idea. The character had very much been Morse's work donkey and sounding board. But I was persuaded to do it, thinking if it was a flop, at least ITV would stop asking me. But the pilot took off, so we got back on this moving train, and we've never looked back.
Richard Lewis has this incredible ability to look like he's just... you know it's an act that's been honed. What you have to do in standup is create spontaneity, somehow; even though you've done this act a million times, you gotta look like you're almost just thinking of it now, to make it entertainer.
In college, I started to get soaked in the materials. Subsequently, I worked with R.W.B. Lewis, Robert Penn Warren, and Cleanth Brooks on a history of American literature - I did that for seven or eight years. In the course of that work, my interest in Faulkner deepened and has been sustained ever since.
My narrative style centers around intimate, highly subjective depictions of personal experience and internal landscapes. In 'March,' everything fell into place as soon as I began identifying strongly with John Lewis as a young boy and saw how we shared the same kind of gravity and intensity as youngsters.
Some people have heard of The Method, which originally goes back to Stanislavski... he gave you six major pointers whereby you became that character and tried to fool your mind psychologically. That's it in a nutshell. Daniel Day Lewis is an example of somebody like that who stays in character between takes.
The dream would be to work with my two favorite actors, Daniel Day Lewis and Cate Blanchett. Or playing Joaquin Phoenix's brother in a film. Basically anything where I get to act opposite actors like these; ones who bring a certain caliber to their work and literally morph into the character they are playing.
Epilepsy is a disease in the shadows. Patients are often reluctant to admit their condition - even to close family, friends or co-workers - because there's still a great deal of stigma and mystery surrounding the disease that plagued such historical figures as Julius Caesar, Edgar Allan Poe and Lewis Carroll.
If you're a believer, God is not a thought-experiment requiring a special sub-creation to be tried out in. He's an actual, er, actuality already, embedded in a necessary and true story about guilt, hope, and liberty. I don't want C. S. Lewis doing his resourceful best to render Him as a fabulous special effect.
We collectively have a special place in our heart for the manned space flight program - Apollo nostalgia is one element, but that is only part of it. American culture worships explorers - look at the fame of Lewis and Clark, for example. The American people want to think of themselves as supporting exploration.
My dad came over from Ireland when he was 13 and lived on the streets, working on building sites, and has just retired from his job delivering furniture for John Lewis. My mum has had the same job for 30 years as a sales assistant at Marks and Spencer. They've always been really great; they just want me to be happy.
He's extremely clever and I learn always so much when I fight with Lewis. He always knows exactly what you are going to do next with his experience, and that's what makes him so good on track with the battles. He's not very aggressive, always very correct, but always very good to anticipate what you are going to do.
With all respect to Congressman Lewis, when I think about him, I always have that image in my mind when he was on the Selma Bridge. The truth of the matter is, with all that he has given towards the fight for civil rights - which we greatly appreciate - these are no longer the days of marching over the Selma Bridge.
Fantasy was something I'd read as a child. And, in fact, my teachers despaired a little bit because I refused to give up Enid Blyton. Then I walked through the wardrobe with C. S. Lewis, and I don't think I actually have returned fully from the wardrobe. So, fantasy was something that was in my life from quite young.
Producing a series is like being Lewis and Clark: You know where you're going, you just don't know how you're going to get there. When people say, 'You should create a bible for your show,' I say, 'You don't want a bible. It'll prevent you from making discoveries along the way.' And that's what happened on 'The X-Files.'
I always loved all kinds of music. I would watch musicals a lot as a kid, on TV, watch the Fred Astaire movies. I'd watch 'The Wizard of Oz.' I was a big Jerry Lewis fan, and they'd have these big bands and someone singing - some siren, or some guy singing some gorgeous song. I was always enamored of that style of music.
Not yet, but I do wanna work with Leona Lewis. I love her, she's so sweet! I think she's working on her album as well so I'd love to do a nice powerful female duet with her. I think our voices would blend really well. There's a couple of other people I'd love to work with - like Fergie, Justin Timberlake and Alicia Keys.
I'd love to do a movie with females in it, and not necessarily the female version of 'The Hangover,' but I'd love to. If I did it it'd star Juliette Lewis, because she's the funniest woman in the world. She's my favorite actress on the planet. If we did a character-based comedy about women, I don't see it out of my range.
If there are a couple of adjectives people use to describe me, anger is usually in there. I've never taken that as criticism. It's the way I naturally communicate. But I'm not faux-angry, like Lewis Black, or angry like a gun-toting crazy person. I'm just angry in a mild way - it's not like I'm going to do anything about it.
All the champions - you go and ask Mike Tyson or Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Lennox Lewis and myself included, and I'm sorry for putting myself in line with all the other great names - but the champion's attitude is it doesn't matter who is in front of me, I am going to conquer this person and win the fight and knock the person out.