I remember I had an actor friend - a close friend from college - Anthony Zerbe. He sent me a telegram before I started my first movie, 'Cisco Pike.' It said, 'Have a good time. Ignore the camera.' That was the extent of my training.
If Reagan had intelligence information that showed that the upheaval in Egypt is actually Democratic in spirit, then he would have, I believe, turned his back on Mubarak, even though there's a long friendship between the United States and Egypt.
The blues is like a planet. It's an enormous topic. You can't ignore the impact that it has had and continues to have on the whole musical culture. It's a tree that everyone is swinging from. Without it, I don't know where I would be. It's indelible and indispensable.
Loads of stuff that I've done has always had a hint of comedy. I did this show called 'Psychoville' that's a horror-comedy. Because I just think that's what life's like.
I don't think I can play a role without falling in love with something about her; even the most despicable people who I have portrayed had some aspect of them which I found beautiful.
I really had a problem with being 'the man.' I'm past it now, but that was my insecurity. I ran from that. I was cool with being No. 3 on the call sheet or No. 2.
It took, like, 30 years for Carrie to be really happy with me. I don't know what the problem ever was. I've had to work at it.
I've learned how to exist and get work done when you're exhausted. I've finally gotten to that level, because at first I had no idea how I was going to do it.
My dad had been born in Mexico and his family had to leave during the Mexican revolution.
I was 21 years and 218 days old when I received the Academy Award for Best Actress. I had just stepped into an imaginary world that I'd seen at a distance for years.
It wasn't like I felt I was on a wave. It was just so easy. It is only afterwards that I thought I really had a bit of good luck going on there with Yazoo.
I do think moms should be given a break, all across the board. And I think that the most important thing is that you're healthy. After I had my little girl, I wanted to be healthy for her and have a healthy body image so that she hopefully grows up to see that her self worth isn't defined by how thin she is.
'Amores Perros' and 'Once Were Warriors' had a tremendous visceral quality that really influenced me.
There has always been something less than wholesome about New Labour. But Blair for a long time had an easy ride. There was the whopping majority. There was the relief that the Tories were finally gone. There was the grand hyperbole.
In days of yore, Opening Day of the baseball season was special, signifying that spring had come at last. Today, however, Opening Day sort of dribbles into existence, and the spiritual start of spring now belongs to the Masters golf tournament, where the azaleas and magnolias and dogwood bloom.
I look fine. I've had no surgery apart from an operation I had decades ago to remove the fat under my eyes. My mum looked 30 when she was 60, so I guess I owe it all to genes and hair dye.
If I had coached in high school for 60 years, I would have loved it. Getting to the top was not a goal. I welcomed the opportunities, but I just believed do the best doggone job you can, and good things will happen.
I had kind of a rough childhood, so I created my own reality.
My undergraduate years at the University of Nebraska were a special time in my life: the combination of partying and intellectual awakening that is what the undergraduate years are supposed to be. I went to the university with the goal of becoming an engineer; I had no concept that one could pursue science as a career.
It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.
I felt like I had a really bad case of writer's block... Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can't get it out, I start feeling bad about myself - a lot of self-loathing.
In my life, I got a haircut junior year of college that was a real wash-'n-go type of situation. It was short. I had six or seven people say I looked just like Hugh Grant. And I was like, 'That's a man. So... that's not nice.'
As long as I had easy access to psychedelics at the government-sponsored research project, most of my energy went into psychedelic sessions.
Being surrounded by hockey, I got forced into it as a kid. I started skating when I was 4 and had a rink only 10 minutes from my home. In my town, we had one outdoor rink and one indoor rink, so you could skate all year long. I lived by a lake, too, so we did a lot of skating on the lake.
There was this moment, particularly after I had my first child, where I felt like, 'I don't know if I'll ever make a record, or if this is always going to be something just floating around in my head.'
I got plenty of grief for 'Blackwater,' because in the books, there's this huge chain across the harbor that features prominently in the battle. And we simply weren't able to do it with our budget and do it any justice, so we had to lose it.
Before I went to New Orleans, I was a little scared of New Orleans. I don't know why. I had only been there a few times. Something about it made me feel nervous, knowing a bit about the history.
I had to try to understand how much of a taboo it was. My mum worked in ballet and theatre when she was younger, and I had been brought up around lots of gay people, so I had never had any issue and couldn't imagine how hard it was to be out.
If you had of told me age 10 that in 19 years time I would be on a stage in Salford performing with Les Dennis in a sitcom I had written, I would have believed you.
'The Simpsons' from the very beginning was based on our memories of brash '60s sitcoms - you had a main title theme that was bombastic and grabbed your attention - and when you look at TV shows of the 1970s and '80s, things got very mild and toned down and... obsequious.
The snappier lyrics come when I'm feeling really good and up. A lot of times, they come after I've just had a meeting with somebody that was uplifting, and you get home, and you're feeling playful or upbeat or whatever, and then they just seem to pop right out.
I just hate sitting and writing - I had to do that in school. Plus, I have terrible handwriting.
I never had to try as a kid to stay in shape. In a way, there was no willpower involved.
My mother often mailed me articles from 'Reader's Digest' about advances in DNA chemistry. No matter how I tried to explain it to her, she never grasped the concept that I could have been writing those articles, that something I had invented made most of those DNA discoveries possible.
We had been to a couple really awkward office Christmas parties, including one at our production company. It's just a really interesting place, an event that hadn't really been captured.
I was in New York. I had been doing theater for many years, and then I got hired to a little part - they weren't calling it an extra, but I didn't have lines. It was a 'featured' part.
