Yes and, you know, I can't use the nice words anymore because I used to chicken out by using them. I used to call myself plus size, used to call myself chubby. I used to call myself overweight.
When I was 18 I went to college for two years and didn't work for a year which was essential for me, because my identity had been so influenced by my being an actor and I think I just needed to discover what it was to be myself, divorced from all that responsibility.
My body doesn't have a lot of curves; I have small breasts, I don't have hips - so I'm not going to try to make myself something that I'm not. I'm just going to try to be the best version of myself.
I often find myself listening to a record because a lot of people or magazines have told me it's good and I'm supposed to like it, and I try to stay in touch with what's happening and I'm also a fan of music. I find myself trying to like something that I really don't think is that great.
I am the most successful unsuccessful actor in New York. And I guess with that, maybe apparent only to myself, there started to be a very subtle but unmistakable whiff of entitlement, bitterness, jealousy. I was not respecting the work.
There are times when I'm super-overwhelmed, and everything feels like it's hitting me in the face at once, but I think what's keeping me calm, and who I am by staying true to myself, is my whole family being so supportive and keeping me grounded. They treat me the exact same way they treated me years and years ago.
I'm not afraid of putting myself out there to someone and then them passing on it. At least you could have gotten a 'yes.' So it's worthwhile to have the cojones to do it.
I've been around horses, but I certainly wouldn't call myself a horseman by any means. It's a combination of being very aware of them, and not trusting them.
I consider myself a brown American or a man of color before I would say Sri Lankan, to be honest. I didn't grow up there. There was a pretty brutal civil war there from 1983 until 2009. So we weren't able to go back very much. I've gone back as an adult. But I grew up in Pennsylvania.
I had moved across the country, taken internships, networked, worked long hours, and called in favors to get there. And I had done it. I was working in Hollywood. So imagine the melancholy I found myself in when I realized that I didn't love casting the way that I always thought I would.
Having the opportunity to express myself through music has been extremely cathartic for me my entire life.
This work thing really has a specific purpose for me, which is to be an independent human being who doesn't rely on a guy or a family to be able to support myself. It's not about showing somebody that I'm successful. It's about having a wider breadth of option.
I don't really see myself as famous.
I continued studying by myself in the field of jazz with my own technique of improvisation, walking bass lines, rhythms, all kinds of stuff, which I created for myself.
I may not believe in myself, but I believe in what I'm doing.
I never got into training to be an All-Ireland boxing champ or to win a belt. At the start, I just got into it to learn how to defend myself when I got into situations.
I invest in funds myself even though I run my own fund for my daughters.
I'm a perfectionist. I can't help it, I get really upset with myself if I fail in the least.
I've learned to suck in my stomach when photographers are around. I used to read gossip magazines all the time, but I stopped when I started being written about in them and read incredible lies about myself.
When a person responds emotionally to intellectual things, or emotionally only to traditional emotional things - I find that an interesting break between myself and some other writers and fans.
I really try not to read the tennis articles, because a lot of times they're guessing at how a player is feeling, and I like to keep myself kind of open minded about how I'm feeling, rather than have someone else explain to me what's going on.
Why do I put myself in a position to be cast aside or not considered as I would like to? Because I am a creative mind, because I still aspire to be one.
I don't think of myself all the time.
I have always been very calm on the outside. I'm not too stressed now just because I'm in formula one. For me, tomorrow will be another day whether I finish first or last. I have to do the maximum and I cannot ask any more from myself.
Divorce is so common and accepted in America that beating myself up over it may sound ridiculous. But I was raised to believe that divorce wasn't an option; to me, divorce equaled failure. I wasn't able to change that equation until I found myself in the right relationship.
It's become like an urban myth. I don't know her. I don't know anybody she knows. I was standing there at the party by myself for an hour and then I left. Once I got those auditions, I worked really hard. Nobody did me any favors.
It would be easy to say that I want to play a role that was very much like myself, but more or less with acting, you get to be all these different things, and you aren't trying to be yourself, so it's escapism in a way.
The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is 'mine,' and it is not a general one, but is - 'unique,' as I am unique. Nothing is more to me than myself!
I'm quite good, though I say it myself, at making strangers feel at ease.
I work with the options I have in front of me and my reasons for choosing a job can vary enormously depending on the circumstances. Sometimes I take a job because it's a group of people I'm dying to work with, and sometimes it can be a desire to shake things up a bit and not to take myself too seriously.
I've been on so many primetime shows that were cancelled - after one episode, after 10 episodes, after just one season. I got used to that. But I found myself choking up a bit at 'OLTL.' It was really hard to say goodbye to those people. It was not the way we wanted to go out.
If you were to ask any children of any politician, when you've been part of a political life, you are not on the sidelines. There is no such thing as a member of a political family who is only a spectator. You see the wheeling and the dealing. That doesn't intimidate me. I'll do a little of that myself, on behalf of my constituents.
If I spent all my time criticising myself, I wouldn't be able to function. There are actors who theorise till the cows come home. I haven't the patience for them. It's maybe shallow, but that's why I'll never be part of the acting set.
I had left school at 16, gone to stage school - and, until I was 22, I hadn't really played anyone but myself. Then in 1979, I made a film with Mike Leigh called 'Grownups,' which went out on the BBC, and overnight this new career opened up.
I've programmed myself musically to come up with love-feeling tracks that are romantic, sexy, but classy, all in one. And that's the challenge. Once I create that music, then the lyrical content starts to come - you know, the stories and things like that.
I don't believe in depriving myself of any food or being imprisoned by a diet.
