I met a guy on the golf course who was a kinesiologist - after I looked up the word, I found out it meant exercise. I started working with him, and that was many years ago.
Years of imprisoning and beheading writers never succeeded in shutting them out. However, placing them in the heart of a market and rewarding them with a lot of commercial success, has.
My dad worked for Nestle for 26 years and ended up being the mayor of our hometown. One of the lessons I learned from him was to never mistake kindness for weakness.
I think anybody who's doing work in their teen years on TV or in the movies, you're a teen idol by default.
As I've grown older, I've developed an appreciation for wines that are immediately gratifying but that can also provide great satisfaction over several years.
Society during the last hundred years has been alternately perplexed and encouraged respecting the two great questions: how shall the criminal and pauper be disposed of in order to reduce crime and reform the criminal on the one hand and, on the other, to diminish pauperism and restore the pauper to useful citizenship?
My years in jail were a bit like a workshop for my - that actually forged my way of thinking and my values.
My debut feature, 'The Baby-Sitters Club,' got good reviews and made good money for what it cost. But it took me six years to get to direct my second feature. I think a guy would have had another movie out the same year.
I've always looked at famous actors and hope that once they get a part that they have success in, they would reprise it every few years in the way a pop singer will reprise their hits. Like Bob Dylan singing 'Blowin' in the Wind' until he's fed up with it, finding different ways of doing it.
25, 30 years ago, that meant something, they were making some money. And they were doing all sorts of comedy, screaming at the audience, basically crowd control. And then there was the whole urban comedy scene.
A comparison of the average professional baseball salary to the national average salary over the last one hundred years shows that for the first fifty years, 1920-1970, baseball players held a steady multiple of about 3.4 times the national average income.
I think that Americans - and this is not true just now, but over the years - are not fundamentally opposed to war. They're fundamentally opposed to losing wars.
I don't want to be 45 years old and have been a hot actor when I was 33 and have people going, 'Whatever happened to Fishburne?'
Not everything in old age is grim. I haven't walked through an airport for years, and wheelchairs are the way to travel.
I'm generally known as a happy person, but years ago, I suffered from panic and anxiety. I've learned to manage the fear and pain.
I fell in love with stories watching a British television puppet show called 'Thunderbirds' when it first came out on TV, about 1965, so I would have been 4 or 5 years old. I went out into the garden at my mom and dad's house, and I used to play with my little dinky toys, little cars and trucks and things.
I was always interested in comedy, like when I was 5 years old. I watched 'I Love Lucy' and 'Benny Hill.' I would always joke around with my sister. My mom was into comedy, too. She would go to the video store and get a couple of movies and some stand-up comedians' tapes.
Most of the time, if I'm in a pickle, I'll call one of my brothers. They've usually got somewhat uplifting advice. One is six and a half years older and one is eight years older, so they've probably lived through whatever my problem is.
I feel like I'm a natural-born playwright, but the prose thing has always mystified me. How to keep it going? How do people do it, for years and years?
I never in a million years thought I would be the person to go to for self-esteem; that was not my intent. But I happen to love beauty, I love the way people look, and I love making women look beautiful.
I did keep detailed journals from about fifth grade on, and every so often as I was growing up, I would re-read them and reflect on the previous years of my life.
Looking back... it's hard to understand what all the fuss was about as things changed in just a few years. When you look at all the things that have happened in the world, it seems very small.
Los Angeles for many years had operated with a police department that was far smaller than other police departments had in areas of comparable or larger size, New York and Chicago being the most obvious examples.
The first few years in L.A. were really tough and scary, but I had to figure things out for myself.
I will not play just an evil part. In fact, I got offered $7 million several years ago to play the part that Faye Dunaway played in 'Supergirl.' I was kind of insulted. I was impressed with the money, but I said, 'Why are you asking me to play an evil witch? Do I come across as an evil witch to you?'
After so many years, I've learned that being creative is a full-time job with its own daily patterns. That's why writers, for example, like to establish routines for themselves.
Roadrunner wanted to make Born in the Flood the next Nickelback, but I didn't want to be that. I didn't want to be a huge rock star playing songs I didn't like. I didn't want to be stuck playing 'Anthem,' the song everybody liked but I didn't want to put on the record, for the next five years.
Sure, men like a challenge - but so do women. And nobody likes to be challenged all the time. I know plenty of long-standing happy couples who slept together right away, spent hours yakking on the phone, split checks down the middle, and lived together for years before the wedding.
I was single when I was first elected to Congress - and at 35 years old, I had given up the hope that I'd find my own 'Mr. Wonderful,' get married, and have a family.
My interest was magic, believe it or not. I became an amateur magician and did something like 400 magic shows through my teen years.
I'm from Denver, and basketball there isn't near what it is out in Chicago or Detroit or L.A. There weren't that many great players to come out of the area; I was the best player in high school. I was Player of the Year four straight years for the state. As a freshman, I was State Player of the Year; I was Mr. Everything, so I was a phenom.
I feel that being an actor is a front-row seat into seeing how everybody else makes their movies. Basically, being in the trenches for ten years is like a college-level course in filmmaking if not more. It feels like every director I work with and every set that I visit as an actor, I see someone else's definition of filmmaking.
When I first moved to New York, I wanted to be a dancer. I danced professionally for years, living a hand-to-mouth existence. I never tapped into nightlife; all I knew was dancers. We went to bed early and got up early and went to free concerts at the Lincoln Center and Shakespeare in the Park.
I worked at the Northlight Theater in Skokie, and the Mercury Theater on South Port. I actually did a show there for three years, called 'Over the Tavern.'
I don't consider myself an A-list celebrity or a big dog, but every time I meet somebody, even rappers who've been in the game for years... they're like, 'Man, I'm trying to get on your level.'
I was born in Rocky Mount, NC. The town of 24,000 proved a great place to spend the first 17 years of life. But, after that, onward, outward.
