I am an actor. I love acting, and I absolutely love what I do, but I don't want it to be every waking hour.
After my first movie was released, my wife and I went Bouley. A fantastic meal. The whole thing, getting dressed up, acting very adult-y, a lot of fun.
Sometimes when I'm not working, I go and teach at an acting school, and quite selfishly, that makes me feel more inspired to do things myself.
I feel that one of the hardest things in acting is the way you need to switch your emotions.
I wanted to play a TV detective because it's a rite of passage; I wanted to experience every area of acting. I haven't done comedy or as much Shakespeare as I had intended.
I am acting at university, and I have really enjoyed doing student drama.
For lack of any clearer idea, I just started acting one day. It had been in the back of my head for a while, but I think in some ways I was afraid to do it, and finally I just stepped up.
I believe that a large part of the training in the regional theaters is in imitation of the British style of acting. The British orientation is textual; they start from the language and work toward the character.
I've never been pigeonholed and I've experienced so many different kinds of skin - what man will do and won't do, what you should do and shouldn't do. This is what's exciting about being an actor; where philosophy majors sit in classrooms or write books about human behavior, we're actually acting them out in front of cameras.
I think that the reason I became an actor, probably, underneath it, was that I spent my life acting normal.
In Chicago it's really a case of the play's the thing - people are just so happy to be acting, you know? We were all actors - not like in New York or Los Angeles, where everyone says they are actors but they are actually waiting tables and hustling for spots in commercials.
A lot of people say I've missed out on a lot because I started acting at such a young age. What's so obvious to me is that I actually was really lucky. I gained a lot and I got a head start in what I wanted to do in life. A lot of people in their late 20s, early 30s are just beginning to figure out where they want to go.
It sounds cheesy, but music has saved me in a lot of ways. If I had just continued acting, I don't think I would be alive.
A live audience with live reactions feeds a different sort of acting that will then inform your film work, and vice versa.
I wanted to be involved in TV and film in some capacity, so a compromise, because acting seemed unrealistic, and so risky, was to get into the production side. And it was a really fortunate, smart move looking back on it, because it gave me perspective on another side of the business.
Using clothes to transform was a huge part of my childhood. But also, I've been acting forever, and wardrobe changes the way you feel, so it totally indicates the character you're going to play.
As far as I'm concerned, the best acting class is life.
College football, acting, opera singing - I approached them all in the same obsessive way.
I went to public school my whole life, graduated high school with my class. Growing up, I'd go to an audition, my friends would go to soccer practice and we'd all reconvene and hang out in our neighborhood. When I would book something, I would never tell my friends. Acting was just fun. I was a kid, I wasn't jaded.
The art of acting is to pitch good. You do the pitching and hope that the other person catches the ball and does some good pitching back to you.
The only way to play football is with reckless abandon, or they'll knock your beard off. And with acting, you have to pull all the stops to make it work.
I live to experience different things. Part of what I love about acting is to live the lives of others.
I love both acting and programming equally. I think it enriches me and enhances me as an artist.
I secretly liked acting, but I wanted to play football. It was an enormous dream.
You know, I don't support esoteric approaches to acting.
Fame is part of me and my life as an actor. I enjoy the creative aspects of my life as an actor. I enjoy directing and acting as well. But the bottom line for me is not prestige and power. It's about having an exciting, creative life.
My family was always supportive when I decided that I wanted to pursue this thing called acting.
I was quite badly behaved at school - I remember cutting class - and acting was a way of channelling energy.
I started writing when I started acting professionally because, with acting, there's so much time when you're not working, and there's so much rejection and so little you have control of. Writing is something that you can do, and no one can tell you not to.
With some actors, you can tell when they're acting all by themselves, no matter who else is in the screen.
I grew up with horses when I was a kid in Argentina. I like them. I respect them. I'm careful around them. You never know what they're going to do. They're endlessly interesting. I've had some good acting partners that were horses over the years.
When I first moved out to Los Angeles I was thinking, you know, I wanted to be an actor but I didn't really know what acting was about. I thought if I could be a model, or even do commercials and stuff like that for the rest of my life, I'd be happy.
I don't really make a distinction because when I'm acting, I feel like an actor, and when I DJ, I feel like a DJ, and when I play the guitar, I feel like a guitar player. I don't know which I prefer. I think I just like to perform, in some way or another.
Sometimes you're watching a great film actor, and if you stand 10 feet away from them, you're like, 'God, they're terrible. They're not doing anything.' And then you see the close-up, and it's so nuanced, and so much expression is happening. They were acting for that camera and for no one else.
I so wish my dad was alive to see me do a Hindi film after acting in six Telugu movies. I sometimes imagine him giving me feedback on my work. But I derive strength from knowing he is watching over me.
The great thing about acting is that, until you're dead, you can do it. There are aspects to it that as time goes on you hope you get better at, and there are a lot of things that I'm excited to explore.
