I have less than no interest in trying to replicate another brilliant actor's work, thank you very much.
I would say the most satisfying thing actually is watching my three children each pick up on their own interests and work many more hours per week than most people that have jobs at trying to intelligently give away that money in fields that they particularly care about.
I always thought I'd eventually learn how to draw really well, and despite constant evidence to the contrary, I just kept on trying. If you're too good at anything, you don't have to think about the process, whereas I feel like I spend my life with my head under the bonnet, trying to understand how everything works.
Although a lot of pain for a little screen time; Shaving legs, waxing eyebrows, high heels, trying to put on a bra, losing weight because women's clothes are SO revealing - Ladies you have my respect.
I've witnessed so many meetings and conferences where people are trying to figure out what young people think, and my feeling has consistently been that you should just ask them.
We are becoming so fickle and self involved. Always looking for the next best thing - especially when it comes to people. We spend hours buried in our phones trying to keep up with the social lives of people we may not even know. Envy and the fear of missing out have taken over. Yet we are all still longing for human connection.
When you're promoting a film it's really interesting trying to gauge what people think about it.
I think it's an interesting thing to watch when a person is trying to keep it together and then ultimately when they do lose it a little bit.
I don't think anyone ever sets out to make a crappy movie, but there are a lot of forces working against those people who are trying to make something decent. There are a lot of fine lines to walk and small battles to fight.
In every song I write, whether it's a love song or a political song or a song about family, the one thing that I find is feeling lost and trying to find your way.
I'm trying to find a way to eat up time without being destructive, 'cause that's my go-to, it seems.
I think I'm a better collaborator, in seeing the bigger picture and trying to just help that, and not be so self-centered in whatever my task is, which is being an actor.
With songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It's almost like watching a scene from a film, and that's what I go about trying to catch in a song.
My political mission is as acute as ever. For me, in addition to kind of looking at the world and trying to engage in my society politically, having the kid around sort of makes me check in with myself. I think you're all busy trying to fix the world, but what about yourself?
When I was shopping around trying to get signed, I made it a point to say, 'This is who I am.' I dress the way I normally dress, and I just wanted to find a label that would accept me for that.
I'm always open to trying out new things.
There's a lot of noise in the world. And one of the beautiful things about doing theater and film is the absence of that noise or, perhaps, the adding of that noise where it's helpful in telling the story. I'm always trying to get rid of that noise. The more you do it, the better you get.
You can feel yourself trying too hard, doing too much. Nobody wants to watch somebody when they're needy, and actors are in the unfortunate position of needing to be cast and needing to be liked.
I never quit. The times when I have quit in the past because I couldn't face trying harder have stayed with me, and the guilt is not worth it.
Those of us in law enforcement must redouble our efforts to resist bias and prejudice. We must better understand the people we serve and protect - by trying to know, deep in our gut, what it feels like to be a law-abiding young black man walking on the street and encountering law enforcement. We must understand how that young man may see us.
I've had this terrible stomach problem for years, and that has made touring difficult. People would see me sitting in the corner by myself looking sick and gloomy. The reason is that I was trying to fight against the stomach pain, trying to hold my food down. People looked me and assumed I was some kind of addict.
When you look at something that's so extraordinary, like a man who is traveling back in time to prevent JFK's assassination, for me, as an actor, you're still trying to seed it in some sort of reality.
I've been trying to... Having been an English literary graduate, I've been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity.
When I started analysing games in 2001, I had a DVD recorder. I'd be at home watching the games just on a normal TV, watching what I could and trying to figure out what we would be facing a few weeks later. The problem was, in the team meetings, I'd always have to keep going back and forwards with the footage, trying to get to the right part.
I'm trying to keep my days very efficient, and I keep my set really tight. Every single corner is active, and everybody gets to thrive in the job that they do. I don't waste people's time.
When you're an artist, all you're trying to do is self-express.
It's different being a director. I suppose, especially if it's a story you've written and you feel compelled to tell, in some ways it's a lot easier than acting because you're orchestrating the piece. As an actor, sometimes you're trying to second-guess what people want.
I've studied documentarians extensively to come up with my own in-house style. I'm a student of Michael Moore's films, of Eisenstein, Riefenstahl. Leave the politics aside, you have to learn from those past masters on how they were trying to communicate their ideas.
Drama lives on conflict. If you're trying to deal with social issues seriously, there's no way of avoiding violence, which is so present in society.
I turned to my mom and said, 'I'm going to be a martial arts movie star.' She didn't believe me, and neither did my dad. They both thought I would grow out of it. That it was a phase. I decided then I was going to do it or die trying.
I do not really think about age. I am just sort of trying to get as much done before I get old and can't.
In college - while figuring the things out that most people do in college - I had no game. No confidence. I had Birkenstocks. And overalls. A budding romance novel addiction. But no cool. No poise. I was trying on a thousand different personalities, but a lot of them were formed by the perceptions of others.
There are lots of people shaping decisions, and so if we want to predict correctly, we have to pay attention to everybody who is trying to shape the outcome, not just the people at the pinnacle of the decision-making pyramid.
Few things can frustrate us more than trying to make a person someone he or she isn't; we feel crazy when we try to pretend that person is someone he or she is not.
I'm known as a strange, aloof kind of man. But all I'm doing is trying to protect myself and my work.
Sometimes it can be difficult when you're talking to a journo after the game, saying, 'Yeah mate, I was on the burst.' And then the translator is trying to translate that into Japanese, and apparently there is no actual translation.
