When I heard I'd be working with Scorsese, I signed up immediately.
When I first read 'The River,' I had theories on what it was about, but once we got into rehearsal, I realized it's much simpler: It's about how human beings try to connect. The play holds a mirror up to the audience, and they take from it what's relevant to their lives.
Growing up, I played 'Ken Griffey, Jr. Baseball' and just whatever I could get my hands on. When I was really young, I was a big fan of Mario and that type of stuff. I still play videogames now, so it was really cool for me to be able to play as myself on '2K6' or '2K7,' I believe it was, when I was a rookie.
We didn't grow up in a jock household. In fact, my dad is an entrepreneur. He was a computer programmer; he was a professor of actuarial science at Wharton for 13 years, then started his own company that was software-based.
People work so hard, and I want to keep that energy up, and you can spread that if you're the actor. But I'm also not able to turn it on and off like a faucet. A lot of what I'm called upon to play is violent or angry. When I'm messing around with the crew and making jokes, I remember, 'Oh, this is the guy I normally am.'
Stage actors are usually much more conscious of speaking up and making sure that everyone can hear in the back of the theatre; a film actor probably thinks of that a little less.
My first experiences of Colorado travel have been rather severe. At Greeley, I got a small upstairs room at first, but gave it up to a married couple with a child, and then had one downstairs no bigger than a cabin, with only a canvas partition. It was very hot, and every place was thick with black flies.
Someone once said that to make a regular person laugh, you need to dress a guy up like an old lady and push him down the stairs. To make a comedy writer laugh, you have to push a real old lady down the stairs. I don't know who that's attributed to. I think it's Aristophanes. Or Catherine the Great.
My mom. Growing up with her, she always taught us to say whatever. Like, 'You think something, say it. Don't bite your tongue for people.' I think there's a fine line with that, but at the same time, I'm a firm believer in speaking your mind.
I used to do films for money earlier. I never knew what perception meant. I didn't give too much attention to scripts. It was either to buy a house or to buy a car. There was a certain frivolity to the way I used to pick up things. I wasn't taking my career seriously.
It's not easy to sit down and open yourself up and say, 'This is how much I love you,' you know? It's scary to do that.
I grew up thinking you're either a winner in the world, or you're not. I presumed I was not. I had no reason to think I would be, and my inclination is towards self-deprecation. I wish I'd known no one was judging my every move, but I'm still like this!
We ought to be incentivizing people to save more of their own money for use taking care of their healthcare expenses, and what we have done is we have set it up where health savings accounts are harder and harder to use for narrower and narrower purposes.
Doing film and television demands a kind of simplicity. If you think something differently, the camera will pick it up.
I don't think I could play a character that I couldn't relate to somehow. I'm not unfamiliar with frustration, anger, shame, helplessness and a load of other emotions that make up our psycho-soup. I try to focus on that frustration, that sense of unfairness, and multiply it.
I love cooking and one of my favourite things to do with my husband is open up the refrigerator.
When my marriage broke up, I went to three separate therapists, and each was worse than the last. I can only speak for myself. There are other people it's been incredibly useful for, but not me.
My two brothers and I grew up in the theater, going everywhere with my parents when they performed.
When I put a quarter into an arcade machine or call up an emulated game on my computer, I do it to escape the world that is a slave to the time that makes things fall apart. I have never played these games to occupy my world.
I just get up and live my life for today - try and deal with it as it comes.
Step-parenting and being a step-sibling presents a lot of exciting opportunities. When families break up and re-form, there may be less order, less certainty, and a bit more trauma involved, but kids can end up having half-a-dozen parent figures.
'Beverly Hills Cop' opened up a whole world. I got the television show and movies, and I would go sign autographs for one hour and get paid $25,000.
As an object itself, to me, books today are such a rare entity - I want mine to be something where, if left on the kitchen table, a child could pick it up. It can visually tell a story.
New York is great for busy creative types. The city has a pulse that races, and you either keep up with it or you leave.
'Independence Day,' ever since we did it, there's been enormous pressure to follow it up.
Kids tend to look up to sports figures and entertainers, probably more than they should, but I've tried to use that in a positive way.
Anybody who deliberately propagandizes with lies should be held up to scorn and ridicule.
I always wanted to play a boxer because some of my favorite films, as a boy, were those great boxing movies, like 'Raging Bull', 'Rocky', 'The Set Up', 'Fat City and Hard Times'. I just loved those films.
You have to be really loyal to the people that supported you when you were coming up.
We shouldn't be encouraging people to set up Cayman Island funds.
I spend a lot of time in my bed. It's a good comfy one with a tartan bedspread. It's the only place I can read without straining my neck, and I take an afternoon nap, which is my reward for making enough money from my writing now not to have to work. I never get up in the morning before 11.30.
When I was growing up, I didn't know there was a world outside of California.
I grew up in a house where my father went on auditions, and he got some and he lost some, and there were good years and lean years. I didn't expect anything from the business, and that's often a danger in Hollywood, the notion that if you're pretty and have white teeth and just show up for the game then you'll win.
Growing up, there are always those kids who are only happy when they are making someone else upset. That is unfortunately just how some people are. And their parents were fine. Some people are just born with bad wiring.
When more land is locked up by the federal government, real people suffer, and opportunities for future prosperity are reduced.
I think humans have always wrestled with the Divine Idea - an idea that unites and separates, creates and destroys, consoles and terrifies. Throughout human history, it is an idea that seems sometimes to have caused whole populations to rise up and slaughter one another.
