In the beginning, the media was calling me a bad boy all the time because of the way I act and feel onstage. None of them have ever taken the time to get to know me when I climb offstage.
So I started to relax and would work on my act eight hours a day, sitting at a desk writing at my grandmother's house, and I would put on Richard Pryor Live on Long Beach and would play it like a loop and think and write.
I was once fired as opening act for Seals and Crofts because I got loaded and introduced them as Arts and Crafts.
I went to high school in Los Angeles, and I grew up riding horses, so that was kind of my life. I always wanted to act.
I think 'The Act of Killing' forced people to look at the problem, but the problem is actually a state run by thugs, or a shadow state, a part of the state that's run by thugs, and a military that enjoys complete legal - not just impunity, but immunity.
People think that, when you're doing comedy, nothing means anything, that people run around and act crazy. It's quite the opposite. The stakes are life-and-death.
It is time this Congress listened to the American people and minimum-wage workers, and it is time that we act.
We're in a new world. We're in a world in which the possibility of terrorism, married up with technology, could make us very, very sorry that we didn't act.
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
But, you know, we spent two years putting our act together.
Do theater. Because you'll develop a craft that you'll always have. It'll give you a chance to really learn how to act and you won't go into the world with a few measly tricks that will only carry you so far.
Be serious. You've got to do the job you were hired to do well, but there's always more you can do. When I was an assistant, I would say to myself, 'You may not be an executive, but act like one.' I would volunteer for any creative assignment - read scripts, do 'coverage,' write notes.
To act coolly, intelligently and prudently in perilous circumstances is the test of a man - and also a nation.
You buy a house and you get it checked out and you feel like you've kind of made your mark here in some way. And then an act of God just comes up the coast and has the potential to just completely wipe it clean. Weather like that is certainly humbling.
I have no shame around the fact that I can be shot into suicidal feelings by certain people's treatment of me. I am no different to any other person, I therefore act as I believe any other person should be free to.
Before that film, I was nobody. Each job I got, I was so excited. Each paycheck I got, I thought, 'Wow, I'm getting paid to act.' But 'The Matrix' gave me so many opportunities. Everything I've done since then has been because of that experience. It gave me so much.
Often, even after years, mental states once present in consciousness return to it with apparent spontaneity and without any act of the will; that is, they are reproduced involuntarily.
When my friends and I would act out movies as kids, we'd play the guys' roles, since they had the most interesting things to do. Decades later, I can hardly believe my sons and daughter are seeing many of the same limited choices in current films.
An affair wants to spill, to share its glory with the world. No act is so private it does not seek applause.
You had better live your best and act your best and think your best today; for today is the sure preparation for tomorrow and all the other tomorrows that follow.
The show can go on without me, and probably will, but I want to come back to act in Chicago. My wife and I just bought a condo downtown, and I want to do theater.
It's a very difficult thing for people to accept, seeing women act out anger on the screen. We're more accustomed to seeing men expressing rage and women crying.
My greatest fear is feeling like a professional novelist. Somebody who creates characters, who sits down and has pieces of paper taped to the wall - what's going to happen in this scene, or this act. What I like is for it to be a much more scary, sloppy reflection of who I am.
In the face of patriarchy, it is a brave act indeed for both men and women to embrace, rather than shame or attempt to eradicate, the feminine.
Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
When you've been locked up in a mental institution, people are going to ask questions. It was OK, because I didn't have to act perfect all the time.
I'm a slave to my dogs and go out with them almost every day. They are poorly behaved if they don't run. They really act up.
I act for the reality, for the moment, and most of all I do it for the process.
If everyone howled at every injustice, every act of barbarism, every act of unkindness, then we would be taking the first step towards a real humanity.
The U.S. cannot force Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds to make peace or to act for the common good. They have been in conflict for 1,400 years.
We must act out passion before we can feel it.
Bromates are regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act, but officials are required to test for them only when water leaves a treatment plant.
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
I think it's bad to talk about one's present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.
Circumstances cause us to act the way we do. We should always bear this in mind before judging the actions of others. I realized this from the start during World War II.
I visited the Pentagon a few days after September 11, and I still remember so vividly the smell of terror surrounding the entire building and complex. I was angry that such a brutal act of violence was committed against innocent people.
