I was one of those weirdos who, at six years old, was telling everybody that I wanted to be an actor. I saw my sister in a play and realized that I wanted to play make believe in front of people; I was always goofing around and putting on shows for my family.
I know you're always supposed to want more of everything. But in truth, I'm having a nice ebb and flow of being in my daughter's life every day and getting to keep my work life alive. I'm not nominated for ten thousand everythings every minute, but I am acting and telling stories I love.
When you're on stage, unless you surrender to the moment, you're not telling the truth. I look for people that tell me the truth.
I'm not the type of guy to go so deep with the concept songs, but there's deep thought in everything. Maybe it's not just a repetitive hook telling you what the song is about - you have to use your brain a little bit.
I was a shy kid, but somehow I knew I would make it as a performer. I'd always be telling my mum that I was going to be a famous singer. In my school yearbooks I would write, 'Remember me when I'm famous.' I knew I had a gift.
My parents are amazing, but when I was like, 'Well, I'm going to be an actress,' and they're all doctors, that wasn't the best and easiest thing to do. I'm sure that I probably went through a year period when I wasn't telling them exactly what I was doing. But that's going to evolve.
I love having my cards read - if you go to a proper place, they wouldn't dream of telling you anything awful that is going to happen.
Covers are always so fun to do, but there's nothing like telling your own story.
I'm not sure people are ever completely comfortable telling pollsters what they do and don't think.
I sometimes say that I don't make anything up - obviously that's not true. But I am uninterested in writers who say that everything comes out of the imagination. I would rather be in a room with someone who is telling the story of his life, which may be exaggerated and even have lies in it, but I want to hear the true story, essentially.
Manchester Youth theater, then the National Student Theater Company, and later, my degree course, all helped form my love of telling stories and directing.
I'm an interpreter of stories. When I perform it's like sitting down at my piano and telling fairy stories.
For most actors, it's such a struggle to get work. Once they have it, they feel that there's an enormous amount of pressure on them to make it work, and have everyone love them. In my case, it was never like that. It was just about working with the people that I want to work with, and telling the stories that I want to tell, you know?
I was opposed to the government telling me how to practice medicine when I was a doctor.
I love telling stories. Creating a character, a world, a whole universe out of nothing. That part I can't get enough of.
People were telling me it was refreshing I was real because previous 'X Factor' winners were too afraid to say anything. I decided to go against the grain. But I took it too far.
Sometimes a song becomes rhetoric, but you have to really empathise. You also have to leave room for both sides of the argument: even if you're not telling the other side, you have to put that part in parentheses and make sure it's understood.
I don't ever remember them telling us or teaching us that the only way we could be more successful is if other people were less successful. They never inculcated the belief that somehow, in order for us to climb the ladder, other people have to come down from the ladder.
Lots of people think I'm telling porky pies when I say how nervous I get about singing. I was good at working out how music was put together, and I was good at being at the back, but if you asked me to sing up front, then I looked like I was going to pass out.
If I owned a network, I would never let a guy just put people on without telling me who they are.
Ryan is an amazing person. When I was his age, I wasn't thinking about giving someone a kidney. How do you ever repay someone for something like that? You can't. It's not like borrowing $20 from someone and telling them you're going to give it back. It's something that you can never repay someone for.
My brother was 13 when people started telling me that he was a 'hipster.' I was 11 and thought it was so stressful, like, 'How do you not be called that?'
Nothing is more bothersome to me than retiring. Weird things happen when you disengage; first you get negative, then you start telling people about your latest surgeries, and eventually you lose touch. I want to stay in touch.
This is the moment when I should also admit that when the Internet first arrived I kept telling people it was a fad.
I remember actually liking a girl in high school who was kind of an outcast and weird, and people made fun of her. I remember hanging out with her, but I was apprehensive about telling anyone I really liked her.
I hate a movie that will end by telling you that the first thing you should do is learn to love yourself. That is so insulting and condescending, and so meaningless. My characters don't learn to love each other or themselves.
When I look at jobs, one of the most relevant questions I ask is, 'Is this something I've done before, or is it a chance to experience a new context, tone and relationship?' I also ask if it's a story worth telling and a character with a reason to exist... someone who reflects the human condition.
I feel the weight of just telling the truth. There really is no weight to telling the truth. It's a little scary sometimes, but if you tell the truth, you don't have to be looking over your shoulder.
In documentary filmmaking, there's a tradition of telling stories about victims. We often do that from a very patronizing place, but mostly we do it from a very selfish place, to reassure ourselves that our lives are in sympathy and solidarity with the victims.
No one knows who I am in Australia. They don't even know I am Australian, because 'The Secret Circle' is on in Australia, and I'm sure everyone's like, 'Oh, she's American. She's from, like, North Carolina.' Like, nobody knows me in Australia, I'm just telling you.
More than reading - much more than reading, in fact - I developed a love for telling stories from listening to two parents who really knew how to do it. And it really is an art.
I'm a really uncomfortable person, so the whole Hollywood lifestyle - attention on me, the cameras, people telling me how to live my life, talking about me in a public way - none of that is appealing to me. Acting is amazing. But everything that comes with it is such a turnoff.
I hate telling that story to people who've been struggling for years.
There's a lot of noise in the world. And one of the beautiful things about doing theater and film is the absence of that noise or, perhaps, the adding of that noise where it's helpful in telling the story. I'm always trying to get rid of that noise. The more you do it, the better you get.
The people are tired of these mainstream media outlets telling them who should be the boss, who should be the nominee, because it hasn't worked.
I could never be a career politician, because I believe in telling the truth.
