Some people start modeling because they want to be models and they want the parties and the recognition, and then there are people like me. I come from a simple family, and for me getting into modeling was a chance to make money and create a business...
I know how hard it is to send two kids to college when you ain't got nothing. I know people may not think of me in that way, but this business gives you ups and downs.
I'm an old-timer in the business from the sense that when you do something that you feel good about there might be another person out there who feels the same way, or a hundred or a couple million.
It doesn't interest me to be Harrison Ford. It interests me to be Mike Pomeroy and Indiana Jones and Jack Ryan. I don't want to be in the Harrison Ford business. I take what I do seriously, but I don't take myself seriously.
Since I'm in the entertainment business, I think I have to hold a mirror up to myself and say, 'Am I complicit in miseducating and misinforming our youth by participating in this business, or can I use this business to re-educate and uplift?'
I'm a mad lover of sport. You cannot say a bad word to me about sports. So I know business is involved and I know it can be cynical, and, of course, I watch it, but for me it's pure.
Because I didn't go to drama school, I didn't start in the business with any toolbox apart from enthusiasm and instinct. I'd throw everything at a part and sometimes realise that I had hit my limits.
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 get a lot of fan mail addressed to Bilbo and sometimes Sir Bilbo - it's hardly ever addressed to Ian Holm, in fact. My business manager drafts the replies, and then I pop in to the office and sign them, 'Bilbo!'
Having cakes as a business certainly changes things for me - I don't now sit at home doing a cake for the fun of it anymore. But it's an extremely happy and pleasureable business to run because people are generally buying cakes for celebrations.
I often find the smaller, independent films are much more rewarding than the bigger stuff, but you do the bigger stuff because it's a business, and you've got to show your face a bit, get yourself around.
Well, they just don't know anything else except that one form of their business, acting, and they don't really want to learn any other part of it, or they would. Directing and producing and putting a show together is very creative, for me.
My mum is very political - left wing - and my dad was in the advertising business. They were both from the East Coast: Boston and New York City, respectively.
I taught myself computer. Then Macintosh came along, and it became a really bad addiction. If I wasn't in show business, I'd have pocket protectors growing out of my chest. I do everything on it. It's kinda sick.
I think maybe one reason why ventriloquists are looked down on is because it's very difficult to be funny. I think what happens is that people get a dummy, they learn the technique of ventriloquism, they memorize the script, they think they're in sho...
In this business, I don't know how you can have a plan or how you can orchestrate anything. But I've been lucky with my choices. I'm very strong-willed, so I've been able to stick with it. I'm lucky there.
Going to New York to do whatever - show business - it just seemed fun. It seemed fun to go to the big city and meet all kinds of different people and maybe be famous. It was just exciting. So I wasn't scared.
Yes, I have a good sense of humor to sort of last a long time in show business, and I think to be able to find comedic value in who you are and the people that you work is always a good thing.
My name was originally John Collins, but I just didn't think it had the flair I needed. I found out the poet laureate of Poland was named Krasinski and so it seemed like a shoe-in for show business.
I knew if I had to struggle, I couldn't struggle in New York. My ego was too big for it. I couldn't be a guy who is starving when I had a very successful business when I was young.
In terms of the technology I use the most, it's probably a tie between my Blackberry and my MacBook Pro laptop. That's how I communicate with the rest of the world and how I handle all the business I have to handle.
