My wife, as proud as she was of me, hated show business for good reasons. There was something about the spouse always being pushed out of the way, shoved aside. She wanted to get away from it.
I have always been focused on my job. No profession allows you the luxury of being half-focused. If you're not into it, you're not there. And the film industry is all the more harsh in these cases, perhaps because it's a business of the limelight.
It's a reality that in this business there's an expectation of being thin. But having a baby is a reality too, and it's more important for me to make milk than to fit into those tiny pants. So that's just going to have to wait.
I'm rebelling against being handed a career, like, 'You're the next this; you're the next that.' I'm not the next anything, I'm the first me. I can't be myself, I can't just be Idris Elba. But that's just the nature of the business.
I have no interest in being a celebrity. I wouldn't go to anything that I wasn't involved in just for the sake of wearing a nice frock and having my picture taken. That part of the business doesn't make me feel very comfortable.
Being an American doesn't mean that you're guaranteed a high wage. You have to be productive, and we have to create a very low-cost, efficient place to do business, and we've let all that slip in America.
Where I know I wanna go is being consistent on business, and that's just making another artist, my clothing line - capitalizing off the moment. I wanna be consistently doing that - capitalizing off every move I make.
I'll tell you where the injustice is. It's with the person earning £12,000 to £15,000-a-year who is being asked to be restrained by their business or employer. Yet the taxpayer has bailed out the banks, so why are they not showing restraint?
In this business, you just never know from day to day. It's one reason I held off getting too involved in entertainment. I like being able to plan, I like to know what I'm going to be doing.
Washington is politics! Somehow if people have political objectives, then those objectives are automatically disqualified? If that's the case, the Democrats have no business being legitimized about anything because everything they do is political.
John McCain knows as well as anyone that Sarah Palin has no business being anywhere near the Oval Office. I'm sorry, it's got nothing to do with the fact that she wears skirts - she's grossly unqualified.
I do that mostly because I believe that the fantasy business is in terrible trouble right now, for several reasons, not the least of which being the almost Democrat vs. Republican mentality of readers on the Internet.
I love what I do. I made my first record in '57. I don't think I'll ever get tired of making records and writing songs and singing and being in the music business.
Being an actor gives you a chance to play all kinds of roles, very moving and dramatic on one project, silly and girlish on another. That's the most interesting thing out this business, you get to keep reinventing yourself.
I enjoy the creative side of the business side of being a restaurateur. That's my thing. The thing I'm constantly thinking about is, how do you create new, interesting situations that keep people coming back?
Part of it has to do with this business of being approached in public. I have a distinctive look - it's partly the glasses I wear - and people seem to remember me once they've seen me.
The only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts.
Jobs has within him sort of this conflict, but he doesn't quite see it as a conflict between being hippie-ish and anti-materialistic but wanting to sell things like Wozniak's board. Wanting to create a business.
Realize that the game of life is the game of, to some extent, being taken advantage of by people who make a science of it. Whether they are in government or personal life or in business, they're everywhere.
I think one of the strengths of Wisconsin's economy is it's diversity - and in making sure that we're doing everything we can to have a state government that's responsive to that and being here and encouraging people to expand their businesses here.
Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not...
