I feel like I came to acting late in a way. I was about 26 or 27, and it was imperative that I make a living right away, and it's hard to make a living on stage, so I started in television and film.
I never wanted to be an actor, and to this day I don't. I can't get a handle on it. An actor wants to become someone else. I am a song-and-dance man, and I enjoy being myself, which is all I can do.
They did ask me to do 'Dancing With The Stars;' I said I can do one show, but on that show you have to come up with a new number every week, and I told them that I think I'm a little past that stage.
When I auditioned for 'Bye Bye Birdie' on Broadway, Gower Champion said, 'You've got the job!' I said, 'Mr. Champion, I can't dance.' He said, 'We'll teach you what you need to know.'
I really liked doing a number of the projects and directors, and etc., etc., I knew about half-way through that I would never be doing that again. It's just not me. I really am happy as a part-time film composer, not a full-time film composer.
You have to nail the right tone because sometimes when you just see his films cold, you're not quite sure. It's the same in - I'm trying to think of other directors with a similar sense - David Lynch's films, Tim's films, some of Cronenberg's stuff.
No, we always had something to do because I did all the wave runners and jet skis and boats approaching the atolls and stuff like that, so you could do that without showing the actual atoll or the set that you're going towards, but detailing all thos...
I used to have this fantasy when I was growing up where Princess Leia would be in the slave Leia costume and she would be in a vat of Breyer's ice cream. A recurring dream where I would eat my way to her.
Turn up your radio. Watch lots of telly and eat loads of choc. Feel guilty. Stay up all night. Learn everything in six hours that has taken you two years to compile. That's how I did it.
In my day, the only people who achieved real independence were my father, Mary Pickford and Charles Chaplin, who, with D. W. Griffith, formed United Artists. Other than that, everybody belonged to the big studios. They had no say in their own careers...
Filmmaking isn’t if you can just strap on a camera onto an actor, and steadicam, and point it at their face, and follow them through the movie, that is not what moviemaking is, that is not what it’s about. It’s not just about getting a performa...
But I think it's very key that there's a plan for Haiti. And we have to begin to - as progressives and people who are concerned about Haiti and have been concerned about Haiti, we have to begin to build some sort of consensus, a movement around the H...
This country has always been run by elite, and it's an elitist democracy. And that's not a radical concept. It's elitist democracy. When people talk about democracy, they don't talk - really talk about participatory democracy, until the point that we...
I've always been one of those people that, if I am angry, I just hold it in. And I always kind of, like, wrote it in a song and put it aside for myself because it helps me get it out. It's almost like exercising; it's almost like that for me.
Well, Neighbours wanted to do a song on the show, and they asked me what songs I had. I told them I'd just written this song, called Born to Try, and I had just gone overseas and spoken to some people from Song about it.
Writing is a very strenuous thing - it's like banging your head against a wall. At the end of the day, acting is better, just because nobody ever asked me if I wanted a Pellegrino in the writer's room.
Now supposing I had the part of a young woman to give out, one that wanted some excellent acting. If I were to go to the stage for my actress I would have to take a matured woman, one who would act splendidly, but who would look too old for the requi...
I used the diabetes as my weapon. Of course, I was only hurting myself and making myself sicker, but I guess it was something I had to go through. I never went overboard so much that I really hurt myself, but my early teenage years were very tough.
The characters I've played as an actress have been really challenging and emotionally rewarding, but there was just something missing. I was finding over and over again that directors were looking to me to help with troubles on set as far as characte...
I've been using the same editor, thankfully, she's been sticking with me, but I've been doing it full-on guerilla style... I haven't gotten any public sponsor or anything, because I don't want to seem like I'm trying to sell any particular thing.
You have to have a certain single-mindedness if you want to reach the top of the profession, and I'm not sure if I've got that cold-eyed egomania that perhaps is needed to get to the top. So as long as I can keep paying the mortgage and keep myself i...
