If I put forth a legitimate effort, then I feel like, if that doesn't work out, that's all I can do.
There are so many things about playing football that seem to me uniquely American. Anybody can succeed, anybody can play, but you've got to work hard to do it.
It's so difficult. Sometimes if I have dessert, I think, 'Well, I blew it.' That's something I need to work on and control. But still there's nothing like a buffet.
I don't have to work just to work anymore. More interesting parts come my way, so I can afford to say, 'I don't want to make that.'
Motherhood is wonderful, but it's also hard work. It's the logistics more than anything. You discover you have reserves of energy you didn't know you had.
As a black actor, you always have the feeling that there's not as much work out there as for a white counterpart, but is America after all; you have to play ball if you're going to play ball.
Because I was aspirational, I did my work, I was respectful to my teachers, I experienced a lot of bullying from the black kids. My friends were largely white or Asian.
Romance is alive and well in America, but the 50 percent who can't make it work fail because of selfishness. It gets down to that. You can't oversimplify it because every situation is so complex.
I wanted to work on this central problem of killing. How you go about killing. Now, in the film I had to kill my children - well, I didn't want to get that far.
There are moments when you feel that the desire to work is fading, and the only way to bring it back is to get away from it, to put yourself in a state of frustration so you feel the need again.
If both parents must work, I think it is more important that the mother has proximity to the child to therefore establish a childcare situation at the big corporations not once a day, but many times a day.
The workplace should have a place where the kids can visit. They should have places at the mother's or the father's work where professionals can have their kids visit them whenever they feel like it.
An actor is like a piece of clay: you just keep moulding me. Even people who work with you every day want to put you in a little box.
When we're growing up there are all sorts of people telling us what to do when really what we need is space to work out who to be.
I think part of the fun of being an actor is getting to work with different directors and seeing their take on it, what they're passionate about. They all have different ideas about your character.
Mostly I work really unconsciously, and I think if the scenes are really well written, which they are, and if I just throw myself into it, I don't really think about it.
I think it's a mother's dream come true to see it work out that way. Not just the mother, but certainly parents, to know that their children have a very solid moral foundation and religious foundation.
I have done a lot of work internally to find out who I am, what voice Eamonn Walker has and how he wants to put it out there.
Well, one of my favorite ones to work on - besides just about any scene from 'Deadwood' - was my scene with Brad Pitt in 'Assassination of Jesse James'. That was just a fun day.
The other day, someone called me this generation's Bruce Dern - I'd never thought of that, and frankly, I don't know enough of Bruce Dern's work to comment on it, though he is an incredible actor.
I think sometimes when I go to make a move on something, people try to disqualify any talent that I have or any hard work that I've done.
