I remember, when we started 'Leverage,' we were all in Chicago, and I read the script for the pilot and thought, 'Boy, this is just a real interesting place to begin a character.' I had to figure out how to go about playing someone who had hit rock bottom.
Children often ask me, they say, 'Well, how do you become a fighter pilot, or how do you become an astronaut, or...?' And I say, 'Love what you're doing and do it very well.'
And so we were asleep there in San Diego. And our pilot called us. And his brother was on one of the other planes. And when he was leaving the airport, he saw in his rear view mirror that there was an explosion.
Some struggle is healthy. If you can embrace it rather than be angry, you can use it as your pilot light.
If you play a role, you want to familiarize yourself with that person's world. If I were playing an airline pilot or a doctor, I'd probably want to hang out with a doctor or an airplane pilot for a while, ask some questions. You don't get to hang out the kings. They don't help consult on movies. So your resources are, by necessity, secondary.
My grandmother was a flight attendant; my mother had a pilot's license, and my grandfather was a pilot. That's how my grandmother and grandfather met.
If a natural disaster like a flock of birds or a bolt of lightning causes a plane's engines to fail, you know what should be expected? That the pilot will keep his or her wits about them and do their best to save each and every soul on board. That's precisely what Captain 'Sully' Sullenberger and the rest of his crew did.
I am still a keen mountain walker and an enthusiastic glider pilot.
I did a pilot for Fox years ago called 'Faceless,' with Sean Bean. I always thought it was such a cool show because it was really raw. I thought we were pushing it. This was back at a time before there was the 'cable standard.'
JJ Abrams is definitely a guy that when he calls, you want to answer. He's incredibly focused. When he was shooting the pilot on 'Lost,' we'd do a take and he'd go back to his tent and be working on the first episodes of 'Lost' as well as the cliffhanger for the eighth season of 'Alias.' He's an incredible multitasker.
Every pilot I've ever written, I've fallen deeply and madly in love with. It's the only way I work.
I realized how important it was to know something about aviation, and it was something I was interested in, so I followed my brother's footsteps and obtained my pilot's license.
From an actor's point of view, you never really like to hope that anything will go beyond the pilot. I'd always say to my agent every time I filmed a pilot, 'Great! Well, I'll see you at pilot season.'
So, whenever Scooter was the Pilot, he never had a chance to fly the orbiter. So, the joke is: I'm going to have a chance to fly it first and hand it over to him.
If you go to pilot then you are probably going to go to series. That's my feeling about it.
I loved being a test pilot, and so being an astronaut was - was not my end point in, you know, either I achieved success by being an astronaut, or if I don't get picked, I'm not successful. I loved my career as a pilot, and it was a bonus to be selected as an astronaut.
So, I'm happy to do that because it's a wonderful working relationship but I will be going out for pilot season for half hour work and that's the gamble I'm taking.
As actors, if you get a pilot on HBO or on USA, your odds are good that it's going to get picked up.
For the last four or five years, I had been in the position where I didn't have to take a pilot. I took this one because the script and the people were terrific. It never frightened me. As we were doing the pilot, I could tell that it was working.
The 19 hijackers that came over here to commit the attack on Sept. 11, there were those that were at the bottom of the line. There were those who were the principal conspirators. There were those who were the pilot. Everybody has a role.
When I did the pilot, Mort was very real to me. When I got through with the ten weeks, Maura is even more real to me.
I wanted to be a doctor at one point and I also wanted to be a pilot. I think if you grow up in a dodgy area, reality often beats down those ambitions as you get older. But with me that never really happened.
I've always been someone who can just move. Some people in L.A. are addicted. They have to be here; they come for pilot season and stay here.
My father was a fighter pilot, so I moved around the world when I was young. Then I ended up in Kansas.
I had never worked in television before 'Freaks and Geeks,' and 'New Girl' is the first time since that I've worked on a series that is actually a series and not just a pilot.
Growing up, I wanted to be a pilot!
I saw the pilot for 'Girls' about six months before it aired.
I really loved Twin Peaks. When I saw the two-hour pilot, they screened it in the big theatre. I said, I don't know what is going to happen. I'm in this and I don't understand it. This is never going to sell. Who's going to watch this thing?
What they did was to make a pilot and it may well go to series at the next festival but I don't have any news on that. It's already been on Paramount actually, but as it's on Paramount it'll probably be on several more times... hopefully.
I started playing the guitar when we started filming the pilot to 'Lost in Space,' which was way back in December of 1964, and there's a little bit in the pilot that was used in the first season where Will Robinson is sitting around some bad foam rubber rock playing and singing 'Greensleeves.'
My grandfather was a general in the Nationalist Chinese Air Force during World War II, and I grew up hearing the pilot stories and seeing pictures of him in uniform.
I directed 24's pilot. I felt we should follow the characters around as if we were a documentary crew, using available light, hand-held cameras, split screens, sound that isn't always what it should be, to suit the reality of the premise.
On a standard space shuttle crew, two of the astronauts have a test pilot background - the commander and the pilot.
I always wanted to be a pilot.
I have long been a proponent of a guest-worker program between the United States and Mexico, and in particular I have proposed that Arizona would be an ideal location for a pilot project.
The reason I've never gone for pilot season even as a younger actor, and wouldn't entertain that sort of thing now, is the idea of signing a piece of paper that binds me for six or seven years.
