As I get older, I'm sort of fascinated with the idea of somebody who could construct an entire persona for themselves - one that was really, in a lot of ways, fundamentally at odds with who they really were as a person.
To be around me, you must love food, or I'm the most obnoxious person you've ever met.
One of the great things about being an older person is that I am very aware of the scope of the work and the historical sense of it. It's bigger than me.
What a costume designer does is a cross between magic and camouflage. We create the illusion of changing the actors into what they are not. We ask the public to believe that every time they see a performer on the screen, he's become a different person.
Authenticity is everything! You have to wake up every day and look in the mirror, and you want to be proud of the person who's looking back at you. And you can only do that if you're being honest with yourself and being a person of high character. You have an opportunity every single day to write that story of your life.
That is who Barack Obama is - a person of admirable character - and that is who he has remained for me over these last four years. I have not agreed with his every decision, but never once have I seen him break his cool, lose his composure, or abandon his insightful perspective - even during the most serious and/or absurd national disasters.
Judi Dench, apart from the name and fame, is the most genuinely hilarious, sophisticated, and loving person I have known. And I mean all of that together at once. That's something.
A few things make a person stylish: honesty, imagination with a sprinkling of humour. I still keep an eye on trends, but I don't follow them any more.
It's very hard to uphold individual liberty when the person you're representing is often a crook.
The knowledge from an enlightened person breaks on the hard rocks of ignorance.
What I mostly do is take the script, analyse the hell out of it, see what's in there, see what kind of person I'm dealing with, and then forget I'm playing a father and just play a person who exemplifies all those things.
When I read a character that I really, really love, I know immediately what they look like. It's like I want to 100 percent become that person.
I am not a particularly thick-skinned person.
Presley is country music, white music. Jazz is black music - it was invented by the blacks in New Orleans. And I'm really a jazz singer. I was impressed with Elvis - he was the handsomest guy I ever met in my life, and a very nice person, too. But the music doesn't impress me.
Everything I do is unfabulous. I'm the most normal person. I love walking everywhere and going to hole-in-the-wall places, like nail shops, because they do the best job. And I go to vintage stores rather than high-end boutiques, because I like to dress different from other people.
The cycle of life is death, decomposition and regeneration, and a person who wants to stop killing animals is actually anti-life because it's only in death that life can be regenerated.
Consular offices make no attempt to determine whether the person obtaining the card is legally in the United States. In fact, the only people who need these cards are illegal immigrants, criminals and terrorists. Consular cards also are easily forged.
The creation of George Smiley, the retired spy recalled to hunt for just such a high-ranking mole in 'Tinker, Tailor,' was extremely personal. I borrowed elements of people I admired and invested them in this mythical character. I'm such a fluent, specious person now, but I was an extremely awkward fellow in those days.
I've had an amazing career and amazing blessings. But I'm an everyday person, and I have lived an everyday life, and I drive an everyday car.
I feel like until you're with the person, the person you end up marrying, you don't ever really know what you're looking for. I'm just into a girl with a really good personality, something that goes beyond looks. I want to be able to joke around, be respectful of each other... there are a lot of things that go into compatibility.
I'm a very stubborn person. I think it has helped me over my career. I'm sure it has hindered me at times as well, but not too many times. I know that if I set my mind to do something, even if people are saying I can't do it, I will achieve it.
Improv relies just as much on listening as it does you delivering dialogue. That's the hard for some people. Some people just concentrate on what they're going to say, and they're not listening. You have to listen in order to see where the other person is going to.
I was a very undisciplined person but acting was something that actually motivated me to get up in the morning. I hadn't experienced that before, but it was something that really excited me. I think I could be quite self-conscious and it gave me a release.
I find that whoever you are as a person is how you're gonna fight, and every basic instinct kind of comes out at that moment.
Every riff had to be perfect and heavy, collectively what we wanted it to be. If there was one person in the room who went, 'Heh, I don't think it is there yet, guys,' we'd scrap the whole song. I think that took a little bit of songwriting maturity for us.
I'm more of a debit card person, and I live in the 'now'. I don't like credit cards anymore. I try to live with whatever I can afford and don't try to put myself in an awkward position. I've done that before.
For 'Jeremiah Johnson,' nobody wanted to make that film. I went to Sydney Pollack, and I said, 'Sydney, I live in the mountains, and I would like to make a film about a person that had to exist in the mountains and survive in the mountains.'
If you're a creative person, what inspires you is always changing; it's always shifting.
My brother Ryan was on the Disney XD show 'Pair of Kings' where he played Lanny, the evil cousin to twin kings, for three seasons. His motivation to be a better actor always pushes me to work harder and try to be more like him. When he gets a role, he will study that character until he becomes that person.
Any observations from the Moon or a sense of realising this or that about the greater meaning of things wasn't as influential for me as the experience of coming back and dealing with being a person who's been to the Moon.
As a black person on the outside, because there's so much black art and so much of black people's work circulating, so many people imitating what black people do, you would think that there'd be more black people on the business side. It didn't cross my mind that every label head, for the most part, is a white guy.
I don't know why everybody thinks I'm smooth. I think I'm just a pretty silly person, really.
But as I always say to people I'm essentially a public service person.
The writing became a hobby in the background: it took a back seat to parenthood and being a person and being a human being.
Everybody is their own person.
I think it's particularly a distinctively American concept that resonates with American culture through biker culture. A motorcycle is an independent thing. You're like, 'I don't want to ride in a car with this person. I want to be independent and ride by myself. But, let's ride in a group. Let's be independent, together.'
