I'll co-host 'TODAY' from Los Angeles Saturday morning and then make my way up to Merced for that evening's graduation ceremony. I'm still touching up my remarks, but my challenge to the Class of 2010 will be to break through the deafening and too often negative echo chamber of the digital era and become critical and independent thinkers.
When I moved to Los Angeles, I was straight out of grad school, and I didn't have a single credit to my name. I knew one person in town - another actor whose name is John Billingsley. I just had to audition and audition and audition. I was plugging away for 15 years. So I earned my stripes!
When I got to Los Angeles, I started building cabins in peoples' yards, building post-and-beam structures and cutting the joinery for those.
I always wished I had a chance to meet an NFL player or even a college player when I was growing up in Los Angeles.
I always had this childhood image in the back of my mind of this fantastic place where all the things I liked came from; Orson Welles, jazz, all that stuff. Los Angeles is one of those places where somebodies become nobodies and nobodies become somebody.
I started as a child, in this PBS series 'Voyage of the Mimi,' which led to driving down to New York for 'Afterschool Special' auditions, which led to moving to Los Angeles. I wanted to be an actor. But in L.A., I got into film technology, and I was building cheap editing systems and would edit my friend's acting reels.
Frequently I get asked if I'd rather have spent my career in a big city like New York or Los Angeles, where the exposure would be greater than in Seattle. My answer is no, not at all. Exposure is not important to me.
I'm contemplating moving to London for a period of time. I've been in Los Angeles for 15 years and I'm really tired of it. I'm continually uninspired by what's being sent to me. Even by huge films that they're doing there. They're just awful.
Seasonal change in Los Angeles is often a very subtle thing. It's not as if we finally stop having to shovel the snow out of our driveways and can put our parkas back in the closet.
Moving to Los Angeles and working in places like Hawaii, you get to experience a true melting pot. It's really nice to be around people who are multiethnic.
People have this impression that once you move to America, that becomes your interest. But I never moved to Los Angeles; I stayed in New York because I do theatre, so my aim is not just Hollywood.
I started out pursuing an acting career out of college when I lived in Los Angeles. When I got an entry into broadcasting, I preferred it. I liked being me, rather than dressing up to be someone else. Now I'm 30 and doing a career of my own and have been in this career for eight years.
Today, I regularly attend two Buddhist organizations, the Zen Center of Los Angeles and Against the Stream, but I also attend certain Christian functions. I try to cultivate a generous, kind spirit and am open to anything to help get me there.
I started working at a soup kitchen in skid row of Los Angeles when I was 13 years old, and the first day, I felt really scared. I was young, and it was rough and raw down there, and though I was with a great volunteer group, I just felt overwhelmed.
Now that I live in Los Angeles, if I meet somebody from Detroit, it's like there's this brother- or sisterhood, where we're real folks.
I was busy with my family, my budding career as a TV writer, my antipathy for the Los Angeles Lakers, and my general reluctance to engage in anything that might force me to leave my comfort zone. But sometimes ideas won't let you go. For me, educating girls was like that.
Los Angeles has been good to me.
I had family and friends back home. Just because I could potentially feel alone in Los Angeles, that didn't mean I was alone.
I think that 'Station to Station' is a nomadic project not only in a literal sense, as it's traveling by train from place to place. Some of these places are New York City or Los Angeles, but some of these places are rather off-the-grid places.
I have a passion for modern and contemporary art. I spend a lot of time in museums; I particularly like the Guggenheim, MoMA in New York or LACMA and the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, for example. I cannot wait for the Louis Vuitton Foundation to open.
Ironically, if only because over the years I've known so many - from college deans to studio executives to European expats - who come to Los Angeles aspiring to nothing other than living in Topanga, I wound up there by accident.
I was in Nashville quite a bit when I shot 'Nashville,' and I was in Los Angeles when I shot in 'Supergirl'.
New York and Los Angeles are really one city, and the rest of the country is America.
I'd never stop traveling, and I love bringing my family along with me. My children have points of reference everywhere, friends from Milan to Los Angeles. I think it's really fun for them.
Given the choice of living in Los Angeles or living in Sydney, I would choose Sydney.
When I first came to Los Angeles, I was a teacher in Compton. I know how in need schools are around the country.
I love being in Ojai. It's kind of a travel destination because I drive to it from Los Angeles. I also love Italy.
