I tore my abdomen. That ended my football career, which was what I wanted to do my entire life, and when that was over, I pretty much looked to just about anything, but nothing really caught my interest.
I think, as a musician and person, Justin Timberlake is someone I've always looked up to.
I grew up in a school that had a big music program, and it was incredible. It's what I looked forward to during the day. I had chorus, strings, band.
Honestly, when I had the idea to make 'An Inconvenient Truth,' and I was going out and raising the money, and I said, 'I want to make a movie about Al Gore's slide show, will you give me a million dollars?' People thought I was insane, looked at me cross-eyed.
As a child, I was tortured because my mother was a brilliant seamstress who made most of my clothes. I was despised by the children at school because I looked like I was going to an opening every day. We weren't wealthy at all; we lived in a row house in Philadelphia.
We were at a beach one summer, and I had a bathing suit on. My wife looked at me and said: 'Boy, you are skinny, aren't you?' I said: 'Honey, I'd like to remind you that it was minor defects like this that kept me from getting a better wife.'
I have never wanted to hide my freckles. I just didn't like the way I looked without them; it didn't look like me.
I can't tell you the number of times I looked down at what was going on on the ground, or I was engaged in a fight somewhere, and I knew within a couple of minutes how I was going to screw up the enemy. And I knew it because I'd done so much reading.
If you come to our country, don't expect to be taken care of, to be looked after, that your children will be educated without charge.
I've always looked at filmmaking as a lifestyle. There is no decision of when you go to work. It's a way of life: you're thinking about scripts; you see things and think, 'That could be interesting'... I don't think about my work as, 'Today I'll work on this, this and that.' It just comes to me.
I'm not afraid to play ugly - look at 'Adaptation.' I looked like a turd that a cat had coughed up.
The mere fact of my novel being filmed means very little to me. For a long while after 'The Crimson Petal's publication in 2002, it looked as though Hollywood was going to adapt it.
I remember, as a kid, riding in the back of my dad's old Saab 95 in Denmark. We were on the highway, and suddenly this silver Maserati Bora came upon us, then passed. At the time, to me, this car looked like a spaceship.
I love the idea of a website/blog being a catalyst for propelling people out into the world, and I enjoy it most when people write me to say that their world looked or smelled or felt a little different because of something that I wrote.
Recently my publicist asked me for a college photo, and I realize how chubby I looked. I know this sounds totally shallow, but my advice is don't fall prey to the freshmen fifteen!
I was riding my mountain bike in Colorado, and I met a dog who reminded me so much of my very first dog in the way she interacted with me, looked at me, and wagged her tail that I rode away convinced I'd just very possibly met the reincarnated version of my long lost friend.
When I jumped off a roof in Cannes in a bee costume, I looked ridiculous. But this is my business; I have to humiliate myself.
I want to be a role-model player, someone respected and looked up to.
I looked back on the roaring Twenties - with its jazz, 'Great Gatsby,' and the pre-Code films - as a party I had somehow managed to miss. After World War Two, I expected something similar, a return to the period after the first war, but when the skirt lengths went down instead of up, I knew we were in big trouble.
From the age of five, I was organizing everybody's everything. If I didn't like the way it looked, I'd rearrange it. From a very early age, I saw life from my point of view.
First let me report that the art in the Barnes Collection has never looked better. My trips to the old Barnes were always amazing, but except on the sunniest days, you could barely see the art. The building always felt pushed beyond its capacity.
The tests which showed that this was the only rifle which had the markings which were shown on the bullets; the fact that a man was seen by several witnesses, not identified, but seen in the window with the general description of what he looked like.
My father documented on film for the last time what Tibet looked like before the world got there.
People have never looked so ugly as they do today. We just consume far too much.
I remember being in the public library and my jaw just aching as I looked around at all those books I wanted to read. There just wasn't time enough to read everything I wanted to read.
I looked into corruption in Afghanistan through a work called 'Payback' and impersonated a police officer, set up a fake checkpoint on the street in Kabul and stopped cars, but instead of asking them for a bribe, offered them money and apologized on behalf of the Kabul Police Department.
It's a mixed feeling when everything you've ever wanted in making films is coming true, and yet you feel scared because it's happening all at once. Suddenly you're in rooms with people you've looked up to for years, the Judi Denches. You wonder if you're good, if you have what it takes.
I think maybe one reason why ventriloquists are looked down on is because it's very difficult to be funny. I think what happens is that people get a dummy, they learn the technique of ventriloquism, they memorize the script, they think they're in show business.
When I was really little, I was on a Pop Warner squad. I did it for a year. My dad was a Pop Warner football coach. I did it because my best friend was also on this cheer squad, and of course I looked up to my sister who was a cheerleader, so I wanted to cheer.
She looked as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth - or anywhere else.
Growing up, I really looked up to the classic Hollywood actors like Spencer Tracy, Robert Mitchum, and Peter Falk. I love character actors - I've never wanted to be the leading guy.
There are many guys out there who look like me - you know, brunettes with long hair. There are thousands. But I think the difference is that I am a real polo player, who does endorsements for Ralph Lauren on the side, and I've always looked at it that way.
I'm tired of people questioning me because of my age. If you looked at my numbers and watched me throw and covered my birthdate, would age be an issue?
I did a voice for this video game called 'Fallout 3,' and that was really fun. I had a great time, especially since I could show up in PJs and not have to worry about how I looked.
Forever, we all had a real clear understanding of what Parcells' teams looked like and played like: tough as hell and didn't beat themselves.
I took one thing to heart that I heard from Sidney Poitier in 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.' And it resonated so much with me. He says: 'Dad, you always looked at yourself as a black man. I look at myself as a man.'