I've never done stand-up; I came via small-scale touring theatre, through the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, then I got employed on that as an actor who had a humorous sensibility.
As an actor and a writer, the anxiety about doing TV is that you start to feel like you get married to one tone or one kind of idea and you feel like you want to be able to express a lot of different things.
The popular image that Hollywood is ruined by difficult prima donna actors is nonsense. They're certainly very nice to directors. I can't say the same about producers, who I found difficult, paranoid, and certifiably insane, mostly.
I've been fortunate. I've worked in a lot of things where I had those kinds of experiences with actors who were perceived as very macho guys, everybody from Lee Marvin to Charlie Bronson to Harrison Ford to Robert Shaw.
Well, I always try to look at my characters as being better than I am. That's one of the reasons I guess I became an actor - because you get to create a persona that's bigger or better or more interesting than your own.
I'm a very competitive person, but competitive with myself. I want to be the best that I can be, and if that means that I'm eventually better than everyone else, then so be it. But I don't go around comparing and contrasting myself with other actors ...
I think it's very important to recognize talent in all facets of filmmaking. Making a movie is such a lengthy and intense experience, so it's wonderful to honour actors, directors, producers and all crew members who put so much hard work and passion ...
I did a show back when I was in high school - so I was about 17 - and it was the first time I was on stage. I never even thought about being an actor before that, but after that experience, I knew it was what I wanted to do.
Normally, I love to go to the movies and when I see a character portrayed by different actors at different ages, it kind of pops a little bit for me. It brings me out of the movie experience. Now we have the technology to cure that.
I did use my own accent in a play once. It's a very freeing, liberating experience. Actors are often asked to adopt a different accent, and sometimes a different voice, so when that's taken away and you don't have to think about it, that's a lovely t...
Being an actor means asking people to look at you. I guess I accept that. But it's a profession in which the job is to show another world and other people. You may access it through bits of yourself, and your imagination and experience, but actually,...
I wanted to find something I was passionate about, something with the possibility of upward movement, and I wanted freedom. I need to be outside living life, not stuck in an office. I figured I could either be out selling condos in Miami, or I could ...
You have more creative freedom with writing, in certain ways, because you can create everything that happens. But, as an actor you also have creative freedom because you don't so much focus on what has to move the story along, and only on how your ch...
My parents were not at all backstage parents. We had none of that in the family. It was just very clear right away that I was an actor, even from 4 years old. I've never waited a table. I taught some - I'll teach classes in improv or Shakespeare, but...
My family took a vacation to Universal Studios when I was really young. Me and my brother Richard - who's also an actor - were both really intrigued by seeing the behind-the-scenes stuff of how films are made. We kind of begged our parents to get int...
I grew up in Middle America and I don't think my family was very funny, but I watched 'The Princess Bride.' I always wanted to be an actor. I didn't know anything about it. I'd never seen any plays or anything and I watched that movie over and over a...
In a weird way, that's the beauty of being an actor. You get to live out things that you're afraid of, and you get to say, 'Well, maybe I can get to the end of it and survive it intact and I can be the hero of my own story.' It's kind of a way of exo...
The hardest thing as an actor is that you work really hard constantly for these roles, and you invest so much in it. And when they don't come to fruition and nobody sees them, there's a part of you that dies a little bit. It's like, 'Ah! But I worked...
My father being in the movie business, I thought being an actor would be great. But when I started singing to people in coffeehouses, you know, singing folk music and then, later, singing songs that I started to write myself, I felt more than an affi...
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 ...