I had tried to get focused on other things. But I always ended up back in the same place, and it wasn't making me happy. I needed to get the focus back.
I remember once seeing a guy in the grocery store who looked so much like my character the Archangel Gabriel, I wanted to go up to him and say, 'Hey, put that Red Bull down. You've already got wings.' My friend had to sternly remind me that he was a stranger and I did not, in fact, create him.
Jesus is still up in Heaven, thumbing through his Bible, going 'Where did I say build a water slide?'
I get between nine and ten hours of sleep. Go to bed at 8:30 and get up at 6:00 or 6:30 if I oversleep.
I think I've been incredibly raw my whole career. A lot of people spend a lot of time trying to look cool and spend time being guarded and putting up walls. I just never had the time. It seems more honest to say, 'Hey, this is who I am.'
There are methods to creating a mayhem that sounds different from your usual mayhem. Because mayhem and a heavy drum backbeat end up sounding like Green Day or something. But if you put a different beat within it to create some air and lightness, the chaos comes through better.
I remember when I was coming up, the music stores where you could get guitar strings was where I got my records from. Now the place where you get your records from is where you can get your DJ mats and your mixers.
Stand-up can take you in so many different places, man. So many doors can be opened up from stand-up comedy, and the first one that was opened up for me was acting.
In '87, I was about 9 years old, and so at that point I was wearing, like, fluorescent green T-shirts and acid-wash jeans and leg warmers, and my hair was in a ponytail with a scrunchie and I had the teased bangs that were up in a rainbow shape. It was crazy.
If I was designing a web site for elementary school children, I might have a much higher percentage of older computers with outdated browsers since keeping up with browser and hardware technology has not traditionally been a strong point of most elementary schools.
Well, unfortunately, my father passed away before my first book was published, so he never lived to see me as an author. But I think my mum was suitably pleased because she was mad about words. If she ever came across a word that she didn't know, she would always look it up in the dictionary.
Growing up is not being so dead-set on making everybody happy.
My parents would always tell you that I was the crazy princess growing up. I was a drama queen.
It is a dark, unspoken truth that the powerful - the 'ruling class' - make up the rules as they go along.
America is the country where you can buy a lifetime supply of aspirin For one dollar and use it up in two weeks.
The word 'equality' shows up too much in our founding documents for anyone to pretend it's not the American way.
American secretaries of state have typically been more buttoned up than bon vivant, but John Quincy Adams's diplomatic successes - bigger than anything presidential or legislative that he achieved - still surprise a student of his personality.
All I do is play music and golf - which one do you want me to give up?
I have to tell you, I live paycheck to paycheck like most Americans. It's very difficult for me to say, 'Hey, I can give up my paycheck,' because the reality is, I have financial obligations that I have to meet on a month-to-month basis that doesn't make it possible for me.
Growing up in rural Ohio, I knew my way around a double-wide pretty well.
Under Confucianism, the use of precisely measured court music, prescribed steps, actions, and phrases all added up to an extremely complex system of rituals, each used for a particular purpose at a particular time.
I would say 90 percent of the scripts that show up on my door are women who have had lots of plastic surgery that are married to rich men - sort of a trophy wife.
One of the things I would like to do is make up stories that I would have enjoyed when I was a kid. So, if I'm thinking about an audience, it's usually a younger version of myself.
I used to sneak up to the 8th floor and watch Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo rehearsing 'Saturday Night Live' and could only wonder if I would ever have the chance to be funny. It took me five years to go up the two stories, but it is such a sense of fulfillment to be able to show what I can do on national television.
'East of Eden' is an important story for me. It's about a kid that's misunderstood and feels like he's not loved by his father. It's a very father-son kind of story, and it's not until the end that they sort of make up. I like that because every boy has trouble with his father, so it's very relatable.
Tears may be dried up, but the heart - never.
I used to draw stickmen with star glasses when I was at school. I didn't realise that would end up being me! The whole idea was that the glasses had mirrors, and if a youngster looked at me, they'd see themselves. Everybody is a star.
Even in technology, you have the freedom to solve a problem your way, you see. But it naturally sits in a certain framework whereas, in the physics, everybody had to come up with his own idea what he was going to do.
What you want to do is you want to own as little sort of hard infrastructure as possible, and your real value is your name and how you build that up.
To be scrupulously honest, I only met Noel Coward twice in my life, and then briefly, but I heard so much about him at home when I was growing up that I always felt I knew him well.
Every character I approach, from 'Forrest Gump' all the way up to 'The Spoils Before Dying,' has a different set of requirements and always fascinates me.
I get enough sleep. I take very good care of myself. Growing up as a dancer, you know your body so well, you know what to do to overcome something.
I've been acting since I was six. I actually played a boy when I was six in 'Tommy.' I played Tommy and they put a wig on me. They put up my hair and put this little boy wig on me and that was my first acting experience. Then I did some other professional theater. I did Shakespeare when I was older.
I'm part of that generation that grew up watching TV, and being an actor was all about being on TV or being in films.
I think the toughest part for me was when Herschelle said that he obviously looked up to his Captain, and he felt if his Captain could do it, then so could he, and that to me was when it really struck home.
At the time I was growing up in the business I was very well established within the industry as a child actor and as I grew up and turned into a teenager there was less and less work.
