I've had some rank auditions where I embarrassed myself to new heights, which is hard for me to do. I was never good at auditioning. There are a number of actors over the years come up the ranks who are horrific at auditioning.
The Porsche was just a vehicle to get to another place. I used it to change people's perceptions of me. I had grown up really middle class. USC was filled with elitists, richies who would go skiing every weekend. So I pretended like I was part of that world - to be accepted.
I've definitely had a bunch of action scripts sent to me, but again I'm a stickler for directors. If it's, like, an action flick with a great director, then it's like, 'Oh let's look at this thing,' but if it's just like a shoot-em'-up with a first time director, I don't know if that's the trajectory I want to take with what I'm doing.
My wife - to-be and I went to see my father. Only he could answer the two questions before us: Shall we get married now? Shall I begin the practice of law, or continue being the successful wine salesman I had become, working my way through law school?
I saw what looked like another fallen tree in front of me and put my foot on it to cross over. At that moment it reared up in front of me-the biggest python I had ever seen!
If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.
Once, no self-respecting puncher considered himself dressed for work until he had his feet inside of a pair of $15 boots made by one of the favorite boot-makers, whose merits they discussed about the camp fires night after night.
I've been really lucky. When I decided to go to LA I said I was going to quit modelling and just go and see how I do. In the first two weeks I got three movies. I was so excited I had all my furniture shipped out from New York.
I wish I had put myself out there a little bit more and experienced people more instead of protecting myself.
I think I always dreamt of having a brand that really was represented globally, that had a voice - that had a clear voice and a clear vision that made women feel great about themselves. That really spoke to women on a personal level. And that women could wear.
We were a Western civilisation, an English speaking civilisation, both NZ and Australia, and we had all these influences coming from both Great Britain and America to us; sending us their culture in the shape and form of movies and television.
I mean enormous pressure was brought to bear - Valerie Amos, Lady Amos, went round Africa with people from our intelligence services trying to press them. I had to make sure that we didn't promise a misuse of aid in a way that would be illegal.
Living on a planet of fixed size requires compromise, and while we are the only party capable of negotiating, we are not the only party at the table. We've never claimed more, and we've never had less.
I had done a cover of the song 'Nenani Neevani' and put it up on Sound Cloud, which Sunny M.R., the music composer of Rowdy Fellow, came across. He liked it and approached me for 'Yedho.'
Bands like Nirvana had theatrical sensibilities, playing with image, challenging assumptions people were making about them, the apex being Kurt Cobain in a dress to make a point.
In 2006, when I had come very close to calling my agent and telling him I needed to take a break, NaNoWriMo was where I found my inspiration again.
I broke in with four hits, and the writers promptly declared they had seen the new Ty Cobb. It took me only a few days to correct that impression.
It appeared as if I had invited the audience into the water with me, and it conveyed the sensation that being in there was absolutely delicious.
It often seemed like we had become a nation where the only heroes were rock singers and ball players and that there were no large men of probity who could be called upon for the task.
Going to college was never an option. I was passionate about music, but how much talent I actually had was another matter.
I've had all that you could ask for. The fat lady has sung, and there's a standing ovation.
You know one of the causes of modern despair is the fact that we have had proposed to us, from various quarters, an impossible perfection.
I had always been a huge Sherlock Holmes fan.
At 28 years old, seven years out of college, I was so convinced that my voice outed me as a fag that I had stopped speaking to people I didn't know.
We always had so many kids in our family, running around the yard, sweaty little kids jumping in and out of the pool, the front door and back doors swinging open and shut, all of the parents getting pissed off telling us to stay outside.
My granny was very concerned that we weren't baptised - Mum had been desperate to escape her own Catholic upbringing. But Granny thought we were blighted. Whenever we turned up at her house, she would flick holy water - from the font she kept by the door - over us, in the hope that it would save us from damnation.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease - of joy that kills.
Don't feel embarrassed if you've never heard of William Lane Craig. He parades himself as a philosopher, but none of the professors of philosophy whom I consulted had heard his name, either.
When Mom had her first nervous breakdown, she said she had a vision of Christ coming to her in the living room.
Well, I think indigenous peoples have ways of living on the Earth that they've had forever. And they've been overrun by organized religion, which has had a lot of money and power.
Why have we had to invent Eden, to live submerged in the nostalgia of a lost paradise, to make up utopias, propose a future for ourselves?
When I first started, everything happened at once. I became religious, my musical career took off, I got married, I had kids, and all that happened within the course of a year. I had an excitement about this newly found faith, and so I was writing about that in a very evident kind of way.
Fame really drove me into my house. I was very paranoid. I didn't like going out. I had no idea how to be comfortable with the press. I was very young. It was really hard for me.
The British system had requirements, including Latin. I'm not positive you ever had to know Greek, but there are certainly kinds of curricula where you had to know Greek too. I think in Britain there was the most mindless, repetitive sort of learning.
The colonies had little occasion to feel or to resent direct royal prerogative.
I just wanted to have fun for myself - I felt I had a lot to say, and I realized that I missed having a magazine as a place to express my ideas. The Times column is a place for me to unload those perceptions.
