My father offered me a dollar for every pound I would lose as a kid. It didn't work. And it doesn't really work in the long run. Who are you competing against? It's you. You need to be doing this for you and only you.
It's very difficult for me to do fund raising for my own organization if I'm working for other companies because sponsors will say, 'Well, hey, man, if she's doing a ballet for Ballet Theatre, we'll give money to Ballet Theatre.'
It took me a good eight to ten years to really formulate what I was doing onstage and start to get really personal with comedy. I always really had timing naturally, it was just about trying to figure out how that timing was going to work onstage.
God would have to beam into me what I was doing and what the album actually sounded like because usually when I start a project like that, I already know what the album sounds like before I start it.
I love 'Donnie Brasco' and 'Days of Thunder,' so after I did 'The Skulls,' I was like, 'I want to be either an undercover cop, or I want to race cars!' Universal came to me with a newspaper article about street racing in L.A., and I was like, 'Are you kidding me? I grew up doing that right off Peoria in Sun Valley.' They asked if I wanted to do it.
I had a ball doing Harry Potter.
When I was at USC, I did a movie with somebody, and I had a blast doing it.
When you act, you're being asked to pretend in a very rigid, controlled environment. It's very un-childlike. So a lot of times, when you put kids in that situation, you hope they have a better support system outside of what they're doing to bring them back to reality at the end of the day and to keep them well-rounded.
Working your core always, your foot speed, jumping rope, push-ups and sit-ups - things like that are really important. Those things will pay off more than just doing what a bench press will.
I really like sometimes to do action pictures; I get a really big kick out of doing those.
It's just so fragile. The growing sense of 'Oh, God, what am I doing? Am I any good? Will I ever work again?' All those questions of self doubt, they do creep in.
I've been doing interviews for years, and in all that time, I've virtually never read one and gone, 'Yep, factually and tonally that's exactly what happened.' Pretty much never.
I'm happy doing what I do.
I love doing comedy, and I don't get a chance to much. I get to play lots of serious people, and killers, and people with a lot of... sheriffs. Good people and bad people, but lots of drama, and to get a chance to be genuinely silly is a great treat for me.
When I first started recording, I was told by all of the experts in the business that the kind of music that I was doing was never going to sell. That disco was the coming thing and it was going to take over and what I was interested in was a minor sideline.
Doing what's right isn't the problem. It is knowing what's right.
I don't think I've ever done a real mini-series, but I love doing film first and foremost.
I think, as long as people have a strong opinion, whether they love or hate us, I think we're doing something right.
The SSRC committee turned attention from team research for building a model of the United States to doing one for world trade in order to investigate the international transmission mechanism.
I can tell how I'm doing, and I can tell if the crowd is particularly dead.
My feet never touched the ground. Lots of good groups with crazy and unique images. It was wild. I spent all of my time doing gigs, TV appearances, interviews, or recording. I could write a book - and probably will.
There isn't any formula or method. You learn to love by loving - by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.
Out of doing all that experimentation with sound I decided I wanted to do it with live musicians. To take repetition, take music fragments and make it live. Musicians would be able to play it and create this kind of abstract fabric of sound.
My belief is the majority of people in politics are just interested in pursuing this career in politics, and doing what's necessary to get themselves re-elected. And if that happens to coincide with the public good, great. But if it doesn't, the public good loses out.
I think doing The Improv is a little more ominous than doing a college campus because it was so different than anything I'd done.
Stevie Wonder doing 'We Can Work It Out' by the Beatles is one of my favorite records of all time.
What I've really liked doing is combining what you might call art criticism or music criticism with something that is happening in real life.
I'm a believer in challenging myself and overcoming challenges by doing things I've never done before.
I've always dreamed of doing a music video.
I've gone the full spectrum - from gospel to blues to jazz to soul to pop - and the public has accepted what I've done through it all. I think it means I've been doing something right at the right time.
If I didn't get a job, between 16 and 18, that wasn't significant, I was just going to go to college. I didn't want to be a struggling actor at 36 with five kids, doing something I hated. You see the story so much. It's such a vicious business to be in when you're not meant to be in it.
To call the American role in the world imperial was, for many who did so, a way of asserting that the United States was misusing its power beyond its borders and, in so doing, subverting its founding political principles within them.
I don't know about doing a sequel. I think you can retroactively damage a product by adding to it.
I see film roles as lovely presents that come along now and again. I feel really lucky and say thank you very much. And if they fly me to L.A., I think, 'God, I must really be doing well.' I've worked with De Niro and Brando and Pacino, and that's made me feel very lucky. But the films have never meant a lot to me.
I am just an actor, and this is my job. What I am doing is not extraordinary.
Anything that is impractical can be play. It's doing something other than what is necessary to continue living as an animal.
