Directing your first film is like showing up to the field trip in seventh grade, getting on the bus, and making an announcement, 'So today I'm driving the bus.' And everybody's like, 'What?' And you're like, 'I'm gonna drive the bus.' And they're like, 'But you don't know how to drive the bus.'
One of the things I've learned from 'Borgen' is that it's very easy to criticise people; 'I hate this politician, I hate what they do.' You are doing this right now with Margaret Thatcher, but sometimes it's hard to be a politician. I'm not defending Margaret Thatcher, but we believe our statesmen are also human beings.
They say Elvis is dead. I say, no, you're looking at him. Elvis isn't dead; he just changed color.
What I try to do - I mean 'try,' because you don't get there all the time - is to have impact with content. It's those moments in which you're trying to bring people beyond filmed theater. If I have an ambition, it's that.
Fall in love with a dog, and in many ways you enter a new orbit, a universe that features not just new colors but new rituals, new rules, a new way of experiencing attachment.
The thing that can happen in a TV room is you can get 'teamthink': you can all go down a crazy path together.
Many popsicles you'll find in a supermarket have a lot of unwanted sugar or preservatives, but with a few ingredients you can make healthier popsicles with any flavor you can imagine.
Gosh, for me, when I was 15 or 16 years old, I was just starting to understand ideas and film and things like that. And then, you go see a movie like 'The Matrix' that absolutely blows your mind. It's not just trying to entertain you, but it's also trying to explore something about human nature and ask some really deep questions.
If you lend your consciousness to someone else, you're a robot.
When you have energy companies like Shell and British Petroleum, both of which are perhaps represented in this room, saying there is a problem with excess carbon dioxide emission, I think we ought to listen.
No one tells you that your life is effectively over when you have a child: that you're never going to draw another complacent breath again... or that whatever level of hypochondria and rage you'd learned to repress and live with is going to seem like the good old days.
I expect if you're a professional public speaker, you probably wouldn't want to go onstage and sing and play drums.
It's impossible in heptathlon to have a proper rivalry - you're spending two days together and seven events and dedicate your life to it. It's like a marathon: two days of mental and physical exhaustion.
When you assume negative intent, you're angry. If you take away that anger and assume positive intent, you will be amazed. Your emotional quotient goes up because you are no longer almost random in your response.
People start talking about you and spreading false information, and it can really affect your spirit. So faith is very important to me.
I don't think it ever occurred to me that I wouldn't be an entrepreneur. My dad became a real estate developer, and that work is usually project-based. You attract investors for a project with a certain life cycle, and then you move on to the next thing. It's almost like being a serial entrepreneur, so I had that as an example.
Bad things happen when you try to let things just happen. You can't be passive.
Math people are math people. When you approach them with investments and business, they don't just ask the soft questions but eventually get to the hard questions.
You watch movies and see bands you like and copy them and see what you can hold. I mean, it's all down to how you hold what you wear.
If I can change than anyone can change. I promise you that.
You have major labels that are willing to take unconventional approaches because the old model is crumbling in front of us.
I do get approached every day by people who say, 'Why don't you make more movies?' I don't really miss it when I get to go and watch my daughter in the Christmas pageant.
Maybe I don't see enough television, but it seems there aren't many shows that are romantic comedies that are an hour long where you're not solving a crime or being a doctor.
Just find things you think are fun, and then you'll be more inclined to want to go work out.
I find that when I'm struggling to think of how a six-year-old would feel about something, I just have to go right down to the common denominator, find the simplest way that you can look at an object or a problem, and not muck it up with all of the stuff that adults do and over-analyze.
It comes down to building your own world out here on the road. It's who you surround yourself with. My band and crew are really positive guys.
I'm from Mt. Clemens, Michigan. It's right outside Detroit. The suburbs. I was always very heavily involved in theater back then. I was always in drama club or forensics. Anything that you could do that had some performing, I was doing it.
There's nothing worse than winning but being told by people that you're losing.
Before breaking into music, I had various jobs: forklift driver, driving a courier. But I was forced into working rather than doing it off my own bat because that was my dad's way: you got a job and paid your way.
I think that there are a lot of law enforcement officers out there who work according to their own set of what is right and what is wrong. And that doesn't always include respect for administration cops, you know, people that are higher up the food chain.
You can't really go back to where you came from. I don't think any of us can.
People have no idea how hard football is, absolutely no idea. It's all about pace. You can say, 'Yeah, you've got speed of thought' - but you've got to have a little bit of a zip.
Exposure makes you famous, not just good work. Famous is being plastered everywhere.
Anytime I met an actor, I just attacked them and said, 'How did you do this?' Eventually, I began to realize that you went to school for it. I wasn't a bright kid, so it took me a long time to figure that out.
You've got to internalize the character. You've got to learn the words. These are separate things, but they work together.
I would say if you do have ambitions, don't just wait around. Go out and make yourself as well-qualified as possible so you can take that rare opportunity when it comes along.
