Long time ago, I was going to be a New York cop, then got involved with this girl who was into acting, then got bit by the acting bug myself.
Unless one is planning to go shopping - basically begging to be smothered by the ravening throngs of returners and bargain hunters; an embrace as constricting as that hugging machine designed by autistic author Temple Grandin - then Boxing Day feels like a bar after last call when the lights have been turned up.
Of all bugs, growing up I just loved the pill bugs. They roll up, you play with them, you wait for them to open up, and then when you touch them they roll up again. I just love that.
When I was 15, I didn't think I was the prettiest at all. But then something happened when I was 20-something - I thought, actually, I really like what I look like. Just because I don't look like everybody else doesn't mean that I can't be just as beautiful.
If you look at your companies, and half of your staff are not female, and a decent percentage of them are not people of color, then you are part of the problem because you need people working for you and you need people in positions of leadership who can exercise their bias and who can exercise their perspective.
It don't matter if you put 'The Dance' out, or any old George Strait song. Someone is going to think that it's awful. You gotta be able to just sit back and kind of laugh it off and know you're doing exactly what you wanna do, and if people don't like it, then it's not really my place to tell them they have to like it.
For me, the whole idea of performance is not being self-aware, and then sort of just experiencing.
I have learned from my mistakes... the business we are in is cutthroat. I have seen too many older blokes give their all for clubs, then be told they are not wanted. Even blokes still on contract are told to look elsewhere.
I think there are always actor parts, and then there are movie-star parts, and an actor's always an actor until he does a movie-star part.
When women are starting out in their careers, they tend to be confident and look to aspire to leadership role and really want those positions. But then over time, as they advance, they become less confident and don't think they can attain those roles.
I had my moments of being humiliated, and then I had moments of doing something humiliating. I'm glad I lived out both roles.
I will make up a crush, you hear me?! I will look at a guy and say, for two months at least, 'I think you're cute.' And then I can be psycho. I will go in my head and make a whole life with him, he don't even understand why I'm mad at him. I'm like... 'cause you came in late last night!' And he's like, 'I don't even know you.'
It's harder in the States. I'm much more inclined to get offered things that are a lot straighter and heavier and dramatic. And they go by looks, too. If you look like a leading man, then that's what they will consider you for.
My whole thing is simple, well-balanced meals. I have to say, though, that I really like dessert. I try not to eat dessert every day, but I'll have dessert every now and then.
The traditional notion of an architect having a vision of a building and then drawing it either on paper or on a computer and then constructing it isn't really how architecture works, and in reality, the computer has a lot of influence on design.
I am a movie fan across the board, though, so if a movie is well done then I love it and it does not really matter what the genre is.
Sometimes, you're going 24 hours a day, seven days a week for a few months, and then you come home, and you wonder what you're doing with your life and why. At least, that's the experience I've had.
There were days when I was literally running for hours in the forest and then I'd jump on a plane and then I'd be on the 'Nurse Jackie' set. I was going from Vancouver to New York every three days. For me, it was really invigorating.
I remember going to university, and the people who'd left home for the first time looked at the food and were horrified. Whereas, my view was that if it was vaguely edible, then it's fine.
This is just the way it goes: there's always a cycle with music - it goes up and it goes down, it goes risque and it goes back, it goes loud then it goes soft, then it goes rock and it goes pop.
'Venus,' which is a Roger Michell film - my first scene was with Peter O'Toole, and I cried. That was basically my part. I came in, cried in a white wig, and then left.
I'm not convinced that women have the education or the sense of their own history enough or that they understand the cruelty of which men are capable and the delight that many men will take in seeing you choose to chain yourself - then they get to say 'See, you did it yourself.'
More understand China, then more people will have interest in China and more people will come to China to visit us because I am a tourist ambassador.
I have had to empty two family homes during the last few years - first, the house that had been my grandmother's since 1923, and then my own country home, which we had lived in for over twenty years.
I think that when a person is insecure about who they are or who they want to be, then it translates on screen, and the choices they make are all about perception.
The way that 'Vampire' was born was over a lunch. We got asked to do the show. A week later, we were hired. A week later, we were writing it. The minute we handed it in, it was ordered. The minute we shot it, it was picked up. Then we started working. There was never any, like, 'OK, here's what this show is...' We had to figure it out as we went.
You can't shoot in sepia, so converting into black and white and then into brown makes everything feel less real.
I've grown up with a piano in the house, and that's where I started to be able to learn things by ear. Guitar kind of happened, and I was using it just for writing at first. Then, I was writing so much that I began to realise that I knew how to play, and that's when I started getting nerdy about it.
I find writing really hard, but then, every author I know finds writing really hard work.
We've got to map all of our ancient history before it's gone because, let's face it, if we don't have a common heritage to share, something to get excited about, then what are we living for?
Ultimately, if you can say that I'm a bad owner and we're winning championships, I can live with that. But if we're not making the playoffs and we're spending and losing money, then I have to look in the mirror and say maybe I'm not taking the necessary steps to doing what it takes to run an organization.
The way I work is I like to immerse myself in the world of the film and in the character's lives, and then from that, I get a lot of ideas of how the film could be made, how it could be told.
My real mother is a survivor, very strong and respected by the people who know her, but our relationship is not easy - but then, it was never going to be.
If you're a representative, you listen to your constituents, and then you go vote their conscience. You don't go vote your special interest buddies' interest and then come back and justify it.
If you have a family mission statement that clarifies what your purpose is, then you use that as the criterion by which you make the decisions.
These things are hard to pin down. We work on a script a bit, then work on a different one.
