When I first played New York, it was with James Brown at the Apollo, and I was playing in a band under the name The Valentinos. I remember Sam Cooke saying, 'I want you to go in there with James Brown. I couldn't be as hard on you as James Brown would be.' But we came out marching like soldiers.
As first and foremost a character actor, I've always resisted the temptation to cure any of the people I've played or make them lovable in any way; you've just got to celebrate them for what they are.
We would work up a tune that would make me learn a drum pattern I hadn't played before. In the early stages, the pattern wouldn't just fall into place, and I would start thinking about it. And the more I thought about it, the worse it would get.
I played the coronet first, and then I upgraded to the trumpet. First song I learned on there was 'Hot Cross Buns.'
Although I don't gamble in life - I've never played poker - I do gamble on stage. I gamble with myself: 'Can I do this?'
I've always loved French music. My parents adored it; my father played it on the piano.
I've never really played everyday people. I've played realist roles, but not mere daily life. There was always something incredible happening to my characters.
When I was nine years old, I started playing guitar, and I took classical guitar lessons and studied music theory. And played jazz for a while. And then when I was around fourteen years old, I discovered punk rock. And so I then tried to unlearn everything I had learned in classical music and jazz so I could play in punk rock bands.
I first played the Royal Albert Hall when I was 14. I was a violinist with the Birmingham Schools Concert Orchestra, and we travelled down from the Midlands for the last night of the School Proms. We played some pieces from the Harry Potter films, and the violin parts were really hard.
As a lad growing up in the Fifties and Sixties, I played both Gaelic football and soccer and loved them both.
I walk into a restaurant, and people stare as though I've just landed from another planet. Every time I walk out in public, it's like the alien freak show has arrived. It does have its advantages. I hardly ever get bothered by the paparazzi, probably because of some of the more edgy characters I've played in movies.
There's not a ballpark I've ever played in as a visitor or home that has the historic feel and energy that Fenway Park has.
I'm retiring as a football player from the University of Tennessee who played for the Colts and the Broncos and was very lucky to have played for all of them.
The advice I like to give to drummers is that there's no right or wrong way of playing the drums. I think the drumming community can be very antiquated and very stuck in the past of, like, this Neil Peart style, technical Guitar Center drum video kind of approach. That you need to have played for 15 years before you ever do anything worthwhile.
As for my looks, if I didn't look the way I do, I would probably be one of those many faces doing a romcom, which I detest. The way I look has somewhere defined the characters I played. My weakness has become my strength.
If I played Bond, my dad probably wouldn't know what to do with himself. He'd probably put his shoes on the wrong way for the rest of his life!
I am ambidextrous. I write with my right hand but played basketball in high school with my left.
I want to be remembered as a poet, a peacemaker, and a philosopher who played.
I've always said that if you have songs on the radio and get played, you've got to have a tour to support that.
I saw Damien Rice in Dublin when I was 13, and that inspired me to want to pursue being a songwriter... I practised relentlessly and started recording my own EPs. At 16, I moved to London and played any gigs I could, selling CDs from my rucksack to fund recording the next, and it snowballed from there.
I ended up buying business.com for $150,000 because I wanted to make it a magazine. It would have been a 'Time'-type magazine: how to do business on the Internet. And I was offered a lot of money for that domain. I played two buyers against each other.
It's always difficult to define what jazz is or what jazz isn't. To me, the only definition that I can think of is it's music where a lot of different elements are played at the same time. The harmonic, the melodic... You're pushing the boundaries on every level. That could be true of rhythm and blues as well. I'm a musician.
I never liked going to school and would sham and play football. I played in the centre forward position. If ever given a choice, I would love to represent Barcelona.
Politics thrives on simple, clean messages, something that played to Obama's advantage in 2008. Stagnant unemployment and the loss of America's AAA rating are as simple and tough as they come. This is the economy on Obama's watch, and there's no one left to blame.
I met my boyfriend, a pro poker player, at a tournament. He tried to dissuade me because it's a seedy gritty world. Listen, I've played till 4 in the morning. I've played with a half million dollars on the table.
I played piano growing up. I played classical piano since I was 5, and I sang in choirs, and I sang in plays and musicals.
For me, when I grew up playing music, I played music in church and people were shouting and having a big time, and church wasn't something where it was subdued. If you played something, you brought it to church with you.
We've played in places where there were more of us onstage than in the audience.
It's the only sport that's played in every country in the world. It's played and watched all over the world, it's the most popular sport in probably 90% of the countries, and then with the World Cup, you have the most viewed tournament of any sport in the world.
My dad is an art director for BBC TV shows, and my mum does screen printing workshops. Both of my parents played instruments, too, and my mum used to have crazy house parties when me and my brother were young - dub and garage would be banging through my house.
Everyone has a different interpretation of characters we know and love from Shakespeare, from 'Miller'. There's specific things about them that are written that are kind of the fingerprints of the first person who played that role, and so I like to think of it as a road map.
I remember a tour where we played 50 cities in 56 days. We also went to Europe a couple of times.
With superstars like Aamirji and Salmanji playing real-life wrestlers, the sport will get some positive attention. Just like hockey did when Shah Rukhji played a hockey player in 'Chak De.'
I was always following my brothers. If my brothers hadn't played, I never would have picked up a racket. Tennis isn't the most popular sport in Venezuela.
Baseball is played by all countries now, and softball, too.
I've got quite a big gay following. I played a lesbian prostitute in the TV series 'Band Of Gold' but I think my following really grew when I played one in the film 'Imagine Me & You,' with Piper Perabo.
