I fought Sugar Ray six times. Pound for pound the greatest fighter who ever lived.
I'm the bad guy on the rest of Jennifer Love Hewitt's 'The Client List,' I'm the bad guy in Renny Harlin's 'Hercules 3D,' and I'm a movie star - finally - on Showtime's new series 'Ray Donovan.' But most importantly, I'm about to be a daddy, so I'm expecting some 'Dark Circles' for real.
Who isn't a fan of Ray Charles?
Right around 2004 when 'Ray' came out, I made a conscious decision to be more discerning because I thought to myself, 'After something like this, I really have to try to be strong enough to turn stuff down.'
We have about 4 million people who have voted for who they want to see in the Hall of Fame. There are some people they put down that are pretty good players. You have Ray Guy, Jim Plunkett, Lester Hayes and Donnie Shell.
I met Ray Charles at 14, and he was 16. But he was like a hundred years older than me.
On 'Arrow,' we have Ray Palmer and Roy Harper, and if you call Roy 'Ray' and Ray 'Roy,' you have to put money into the jar.
There were four major 20th-century science fiction writers: Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein and Ray Bradbury. Of those four, the first three were all published principally in science-fiction magazines. They were preaching to the converted.
I just did a part in 'Sin City 2.' I got to do a scene with Ray Liotta. Amazing man, extraordinary gentleman who was just so kind to me... I'm so excited about that; I think it's gonna be very cool.
The Beatles and Ray Charles were in the same charts together, and that was just called pop music - it wasn't called soul or rock. The best pop music just stands out as something that's just original, and I think it should all be called pop again.
Ray Bradbury was the first author that I was really exposed to back in grade school. I'm a big Philip K. Dick fan, but the emotion and humanity that Bradbury brings to his stories and the way he uses sci-fi to get at the human heart is something that's unique and for me incredibly influential.
What happens also is that a lot of those people and reporters who vote for Hall of Famers, some of the people who were around when Ray Guy was around, are deceased. And some of the reporters don't remember Ray Guy. He should have been in the Hall of Fame 15 years ago.
I'm not running around as a continual ray of sunshine. It's just I don't believe in wasting time feeling sorry for myself. Get over it.
I'm a big fan of all the great movie devils, from Walter Huston to Ray Walston to Al Pacino to Jack Nicholson.
I thought I was going to be a horror story writer. My influences were horror writers, like Rich Matheson, Ray Bradbury and Bram Stoker.
Ray Bradbury's connections to fantasy, space, cinema, to the macabre and the melancholy, were all born of his years spent running, jumping, galloping through the woods, across the fields, and down the brick-paved streets of Waukegan.
Little Richard was it for me, man. Later, it was Ray Charles and Bobby 'Blue' Bland, B.B. King.
I always have two pairs of glasses: geeky black Warby Parker frames and Wayfarer Ray Bans. Those are key!
When actors have the opportunity to play a larger-than-life icon - my wife did it with Tina Turner, and Jamie Foxx did it with Ray Charles - you have to make a decision how you go in. What do you start with? Where do you begin?
I was playing in the league when Ray Guy was playing in the league. He was the best kicker I've ever seen. He could bullet that ball 70 yards.
I grew up singing Ray Charles and Jimmy Reed.
I saw Ray Charles at Massey Hall.
When I read 'Ray' for the first time, I had just quit. When I read 'The Last King of Scotland,' I had just quit. I hadn't quite quit when I read 'Scandal,' but I was feeling really unfulfilled as an actor.
Rachael Ray is probably the most watched kitchen personality in the history of American television.
I always say that I went to the College of Blossoms and the University of Ray Charles.
I remember the beginnings of the Kurzweil reading machine. I was one of the first to meet Ray Kurzweil and purchase the reading machine in Boston. To think that the machine was at least two and a half large suitcases at the time, and now you have a camera and it takes a picture and you have sound.
I've always slightly preferred Spade to Marlowe, probably just because I thought Hammett was cooler than Chandler. He was leftwing, his name shortened to Dash rather than Ray, and he didn't smoke a pipe or like cats.
Even though the outcome wasn't the way it should have been, publicly I still feel in my heart I won the Sugar Ray Leonard fight.
I think there are always people who, when they get the bug to play an instrument, they want to get as good as they can with it rather than just be simply adequate at it. You run into them every once in a while - some kid who wants to be the next Stevie Ray Vaughan, for whatever reason, and plays exactly like him.
Our problems stem from our childhood. Ray was, for so long, the only boy. Then I arrive and take all his limelight away from him. That must have quite a profound effect. I sometimes think that Ray was only happy for three-and-a-half years in his life. And those were the three-and-a-half years before I was born.
I would've given my right arm to do something on the 'Ray' film, the movie about Ray Charles.
I love Ray Charles. He can still teach everybody a lot about how to make great music. Not necessarily how to make hits, but how to make great music. Of course, part of it is his incredible talent. Who are the greatest jazz singers in the world? Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday and Ray Charles.
One day, I'll be listening to a bunch of Ray Charles, the next day it's nothing but Red Hot Chili Peppers. The next day it might be Tupac all day.
I got to know Sugar Ray but I certainly would not say we were good friends.
Kurt Vonnegut said, 'The best of Bob and Ray is virtually indistinguishable from the worst.' I'm sure he meant that as a compliment.
I was one of I think three white girls in my school. So, I was very much an outsider. And plus I was Jewish and all of my friends were black and Baptist because they listen to the coolest music. We were all listening to Ray Charles and what was then called race music.