In the best works of fiction, there's no mustache-twirling villain. I try to write shows where even the bad guy's got his reasons.
I got canceled in the middle of making the pilot.
I edit things down, and I've got a massive dressing room in the country, and so all the things I'm not going to wear but don't want to get rid of go there. And all the stuff I want to get rid of goes to Oxfam.
You can catch me in whatever's funky, whatever's got that swag. If it's got that swag, I'm putting it on.
In the sense that people who produce things and work get rewarded, statistically. You don't get rewarded precisely for your effort, but in Russia you got rewarded for being alive, but not very well rewarded.
When I was doing 'Generation Kill' in Africa I worked with five really super-trained Navy SEALs who taught us all these moves like how to disarm people: if there's a bar fight and someone's got a chair or there's someone with a gun behind our head, how to disable them and take them down in a swift move.
I did skit comedy online for many years, beginning around 2001. Around 2006 I started watching a lot of food television and got re-interested in food. I come from a very food-obsessed family. But I also wanted to do my own thing, which was the comedy.
It's easy to have a good season but if you want to have a great season you have got to win a major tournament.
Don't shed any tears for me. I got to live a dream most people don't get to live.
Big brother listening in on your phone calls - I got a problem with that.
I got my degree. More importantly, I got a key to American opportunity. That's who we are - a nation that rewards ambition with opportunity. Where hard work can lead to success, no matter where you start.
But I used to have a bit of a gambling problem. And that would have been the answer to my prayers. It got worse when I started playing this character, too.
Let me tell you a story about when I was growing up in Spain. Many Sundays, we would invite 30, 40, 50 people to the countryside, and my father would make a big paella. He put me in charge of the fire and the 'stove' - the rocks that hold the pan. But he wouldn't let me cook. I got so unbelievably upset.
But really it was just, it was perfect. You know, I actually got that feeling like you know what, maybe this is why I'm alive, you know - maybe this is why I'm here on this on earth.
We never did these kinds of loans that really started this mess, the subprime loans. We just never got into that business. We were enticed a lot of times to do so by a lot of Wall Street-type players, but I, frankly, never understood some of this stuff.
So I got caught up in the same wave as everybody else and went right out to Hollywood, to make movies.
I got my heroes secondhand, from television and movies, to a certain extent.
My first paying job was a in a production of Neil LaBute's 'Bash: Latter Day Plays' at the Union Street theater in Borough. I played the 'Medea Redux' character. That was my first job out of drama school. I can't remember how much I got paid. I'm sure it was pennies.
There comes a point in every story where you have got a reservoir of knowledge, and you are then really just adding the substantial new facts to your understanding of it. That is the easiest situation, because you can call on that reservoir, but when you get a sudden story out of nowhere, like ebola, you don't have a reservoir of knowledge.
The most brilliant satire of all time was 'A Modest Proposal' by Jonathan Swift. You'll notice how everything got straightened out in Ireland within days of that coming out.
You've got to be a thermostat rather than a thermometer. A thermostat shapes the climate of opinion; a thermometer just reflects it.
And my daddy could play a harmonica and also the guitar, so I guess I got a little bit from both of 'em, but I think mostly from my mother's side of the family.
I was a Beach Boys guy, but I was won over. In '64, as the radio stations were creating this duel between The Beatles and The Beach Boys, I slowly but surely got won over by the Mop Tops.
On balance, I am a supporter of the minimum wage going up. We've got to be very careful what we wish for because some employers - and there could be a lot of them - will be scared away from hiring new people or creating incremental hours for part-time people as a result of that wage going up.
But now I've got a young son and his interest is in science and now when I talk to him, I see that in the science sphere of our lives there is new, there is progress.
I hadn't even watched '24' before, and the audition was kind of far away. When I got the material, there wasn't a character yet, so it almost seemed like an assistant to Jack Bauer saying, 'Yes, sir. No, sir.'
When I got out of college in 1991, I had four jobs in four different parts of L.A. There was I Love Juicy, a smoothie bar in Venice, and the Videotheque on Sunset Boulevard, across from the old Tower Records. I was also an intern at the 'Los Angeles Reader' in the Miracle Mile and at 'High Performance' magazine downtown.
It just broke my heart, and I had to get away from it. I love them to death, but they know how bad it got. It's not their fault, but I couldn't do that any longer.
I applied to American Repertory School up at Harvard at got in.
You campaigned against rich people and you got enough envy whipped up in the country and you're gonna get 'em. You're gonna stick it to those rich people. But guess what? You may not get anymore revenue. You may not get anymore economic growth. But you can say, 'I stuck it to the rich people.'
Everybody who knows me is like, 'Dude, you've got to chill out.' I can't not work, given where I want to be.
Prejudices are not easily got rid of as an old coat which is no longer thought of.
My mom never cared if I came home dirty from playing outside with my brother. If I got my dress muddy, or my jeans were ripped, or I got blood on something. But I think a lot of girls have a different experience.
I was very pleased to find that once I had records out music videos were starting to happen, so I directed some of my own music videos and got to experiment in other areas of expression.
There were times when there were parts that I was sure I got and then I didn't, and I did get upset. But at this point, it doesn't affect me in the least because I know how the business works.
I got interested in politics during the civil rights movement and then Vietnam.
