When the script is finished, and you're sitting around at a table read, and all the actors are reading the words that you've written, and you're hearing it out loud for the first time, that is always, every single time, no matter what, a magical process.
When you think you're good, you will play at that level. If you doubt yourself, you will play like crap.
When you listen to stereo on your home system, your both ears hear both speakers. Turn on the left speaker sometime and notice you're hearing it also in your right ear.
Coming from Ireland, it's quite hard to do a startup because you're culturally so far away from what everyone else is doing. In the Bay Area, it's much easier. It's the equivalent of an actor or actress moving to Hollywood.
I truly believe that when you've found the one you're searching for, you become a better version of yourself. You're better for it.
You can't make an action movie without action, and so, you can't make a romance movie without romance.
Some things don't wind up sounding like you'd expect, which is just as well.
The great fun for me is these collaborators. I'm nothing by myself. Being with these people, whether it's the 'Homeland' cast or stage collaborators, they make you everything you are. They make you come to work. They make you be alive.
You play 20 games, you have one bad game, I think any team in this league will live with that.
I think a lot of actors will tell you that playing a villain can be more fun than playing the straight and narrow good guy.
The studio is not the place to write. You need to be 75% ready when you go into the studio, and then the music can develop to the next stage.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
The whole point of a sacrifice is that you give up something you never really wanted in the first place. People are doing it around you all the time. They give up their careers, say - or their beliefs - or sex.
I think what it takes to succeed remains the same. You have to have a real love of your sport to carry you through all the bad times, you still want to go ski even when things aren't working. You must have a commitment to work hard and to never give up.
Don't do anything by half. If you love someone, love them with all your soul. When you go to work, work your ass off. When you hate someone, hate them until it hurts.
If you want to direct, you've got to work.
You know, from my point of view, I'm the luckiest cat on the planet.
You may gain temporary appeasement by a policy of concession to violence, but you do not gain lasting peace that way.
I think I've been very fortunate, considering the obstacles that I had to deal with, you know, just being - by virtue of being a brown, lovely, brown-skinned man. But on the other hand, I've been able to make a good living, and I've been able to take care of my family, which is most important to me.
If you are famous, single, and actually want to build a relationship that works, don't look to date your co-stars... just ask them to set you up with their agent.
As much as I love historical fiction, my problem with historical fiction is that you always know what's going to happen.
When you're in a different place every day, there's this kind of madness that sets in.
OK, the wonderful thing about soccer is, a football is a perfectly round object, and it doesn't make mistakes. The player using it makes mistakes. And the more you use it, the less mistakes you make.
You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it.
There are those who say to you - we are rushing this issue of civil rights. I say we are 172 years late.
I think it's necessary to identify with anything - with any character you play, there's got to be something in common, so you can link up to that person, even if it's like one tiny thing. But it's equally fun to play somebody completely different, and trying to find what that thing is to make it.
One and one is two, and two and two is four, and five will get you ten if you know how to work it.
You may be a princess or the richest woman in the world, but you cannot be more than a lady.
The beauty of Maine is such that you can't really see it clearly while you live there. But now that I've moved away, with each return it all becomes almost hallucinatory: the dark blue water, the rocky coast with occasional flashes of white sand, the jasper stone beaches along the coast, the pine and fir forests somehow vivid in their stillness.
As kids we're not taught how to deal with success; we're taught how to deal with failure. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. If at first you succeed, then what?
We talk about freedoms for African-Americans but unless you have more than one option politically, how free are you?
First of all, you've got to have a vision of 'What kind of program do I want to have?' Then you've got to have a plan to implement it. Then you've got to set the example that you want, develop the principles and values that are important, and get people to buy into it.
I could be, you know, the person that shows little kids that giving up isn't something that you should do.
To be happy in this world, first you need a cell phone and then you need an airplane. Then you're truly wireless.
I start thinking about life after death. I've got to quit thinking about it because it's very deep. Very deep. Sometimes you start thinking about it, and you don't feel like you want to be alive, so I don't like to get all quiet.
Dark comedy is very difficult. You have to bring the audience in and push them away at the same time.
