If I can iron out my accent, it opens up another world of possible jobs. Whereas if you have that very strong European accent, it leaves you always being cast as the Hungarian maid or the stripper or whatever. I have voice lessons, and my coach has given me different tongue-twisters to rehearse at home.
If someone accuses me of not being born here, I can go -within 10 minutes - to my filing cabinet and I can pick up my real birth certificate and I can go, 'See? Look! Here it is. Here it is.'
Oprah has been a true inspiration to me, so I'm truly grateful both to her for taking the time to speak with me, and to the folks at 'DWTS' who set it all up.
I think, from a really early age, I just wanted to be an actress. And I ended up doing comedy because it was the thing that kind of, like, came out of my nature the most easily. But, I've always wanted to do as many different kinds of performances - whatever I could.
I've never really felt like a veteran. I've never felt like the guy who's like, 'OK, everyone needs to look up to me and respect me.' I've always just been one of the guys that people are excited to get in the ring with. That's all I want.
Suppose you could be hooked up to a hypothetical 'experience machine' that, for the rest of your life, would stimulate your brain and give you any positive feelings you desire. Most people to whom I offer this imaginary choice refuse the machine. It is not just positive feelings we want: we want to be entitled to our positive feelings.
Growing up, I remember thinking country music was all honky-tonks and beer and trucks - Britney Spears was my first concert.
I like to take up something that is challenging. I like to stretch myself.
I was born in Westchester, NY. I grew up around the Rye Brook area, and then I moved to White Plains with my family.
Being Irish was a big thing for me, particularly growing up in Chicago.
Even reading my first bad review was an awesome experience. It was cool because you make something and not everybody's going to like it. I felt like that kind of grew me up a little bit into a professional. I was a student filmmaker, and no one writes reviews about student films.
I had to learn how to chop wood actually - I don't think my dad would have let me go chop wood in the backyard growing up.
I think I was very lucky to have grown up with an artist's studio in the house. It was a kind of life that was possible. Yeah, it made it kind of harder because the standards were higher, but there was no pressure.
Growing up, there were no families on TV that looked like mine.
It's a fine line to find that balance: to show people enough to give them the promise of something unique, and something they want to see, but at the same time make sure that when they show up for the movie, they're surprised by what they eventually get.
The 'sent' folder of my email program is really my biggest inspiration and my biggest source of lyrics. That's where I go to pick up a lot of the lyrics that I'm writing.
I would not have an event before the majors. I would build them up. It very rarely happens that a player plays the week before, wins the event, and then goes on to win the slam.
In life, my childish behavior is the good kind, not to where it's annoying and, 'Wow, someone sit him down and give him a bottle, give him a Pamper.' It's like, 'This situation is very heavy, but RJ is here, so he'll lighten things up a little.'
If you don't work yourself up into a fever of greed and covetousness in an art museum, you're just not doing the job.
There's a lot of actors I think that appear so much more together as the characters they portray as opposed to the actual people, so I know I've said this before: Hollywood's not a place where you're rewarded for growing up.
I wanted to play around with the format, really tear it to pieces and shake it up. For example, if Mitch saves someone from drowning, and that person then goes out and releases a virus that kills a million people. Imagine the moral implications of that.
Everyone has a hole inside themselves. They don't know they had it until they have kids, and then that hole fills up. And it's so great; it's just God's greatest gift to us.
I'm in my usual state up here in the commentary box: high tension, heart beating like a trip hammer, whatever that is.
I believe that presidents up through and including George Bush have known that Americans were left alive and in violation of law, these high officials and certain of their appointed subordinates have continued and perpetrated a cover up of this reality.
When I was 4 or 5 and I could put complete thoughts together and really feel them, I remember watching the Grammy's or something like that and getting real emotional because I wanted to be up there.
The crime problem in New York is getting really serious. The other day the Statue of Liberty had both hands up.
Working out makes me feel good. When I don't work out for a few days, I start feeling grumpy. When I'm at the gym, it wakes me up. My spirits are higher. I just feel happier and more motivated to do things.
I always enjoy it when I walk on stage. There were some times when I was working so much in the '80s, and I felt really burnt-out. But I'd be up there singing and not be 10,000 million miles away, you know, just opening my mouth and the words coming out.
I used to write in school a lot; I always liked it and used to write on my own, comic books, come up with alternate story lines to the stuff I watched and read, a lot of books and TV, episodes of 'Twilight Zone.' I didn't think about it.
In Japan, they have TV sets in cars right now, where you can punch up traffic routes, weather, everything! You can get Internet access already in cars in Japan, so within the next 2 to 3 years it's gonna be so crazy!
I guess because I had such a horrible life growing up, going from place to place not knowing what I was gonna do and ending up being homeless, there was a lot of pain and a lot of anger that was coming out through my guitar playing.
I've always been into fashion since I was a kid. I love fashion. I appreciate it. I just enjoy dressing up and getting all the new sneakers and all the hot exclusive clothes - I did even when I was young.
My siblings and I were friends with the boys who would become our stepbrothers - we grew up on the same street. I feel very special to have these amazing people in my life and if we hadn't all moved into this big house together I think I would have missed out on that, because we would have drifted apart.
With fantasy and sci-fi, it's based in a real fandom. You're presenting to experts, and their source material is really important to them. They'll come up and ask: 'so when you turned your head slightly in that scene, what were you thinking?'
Too many people feel that where you start out dictates where you should end up. I was on welfare and just shy of 19 when my first daughter was born, but I was encouraged to take advantage of my ability and drive and remained in school.
I open myself up every time I walk on screen and give you everything that I am. There are parts of me that are in every movie that I've done. That to me is what my job is.
