You're always just trying to create opportunities and be ready when those opportunities present themselves. I can't look at anybody and think 'I want to be Damian Lewis' - I'd be setting myself up for failure.
I've probably earned the right to screw up a few times. I don't want the fear of failure to stop me from doing what I really care about.
At first I wasn't sure that I had the talent, but I did know I had a fear of failure, and that fear compelled me to fight off anything that might abet it.
The fact that The Bridge contains folk lore and other material suitable to the epic form need not therefore prove its failure as a long lyric poem, with interrelated sections.
And I went to New York and died; for 10 years I walked those pavements. I can't think of New York without feeling uncomfortable and feeling like a failure.
Some people will go to the opening of an envelope. They live their lives in the public eye and get off on it, they need it. They need that kind of adoration. If their name isn't in the tabloids once a week they feel like a failure.
A lot of suffering is just getting rid of dross in yourself, and lingering and hanging in the darkness is often - I say this against myself - a failure of imagination, to imagine the door into the light.
The hippy movement was a failure. All hippies around now just represent complete apathy. There's a million good reasons why the thing failed, OK. But the only thing we've got to live with is that it failed.
I can plunk out enough chords to write a song, but I'm completely afraid to play guitar in front of other people. It's a fear of failure, I guess.
We stand a chance of getting a president who has probably killed more people before he gets into office than any president in the history of the United States.
My mom passed down to me her old Levi's denim jacket. When I left it on a plane, I was devastated. I've never been able to find anything with quite the same cool, faded look.
I remember going with my mom to a random garage sale as a kid and thinking what a cool treasure hunt that whole world was. Only to transition as an adult to think, 'What a gross place that really is.'
I have always felt that this story is universal. When I began to understand the details of the history, I felt that the most compelling aspect was not what happened, but what continues to happen and how it is denied.
I like storytelling movies and more than that I like historical movies; and I think someday I'll definitely make a movie about the past 50 years history.
Unlike a lot of comics, I didn't care about getting on 'Saturday Night Live.' That show had such history and was so established that I didn't see the point.
There are so many times and places in history in our world that I just don't know anything about, and when I learn about them they're always fascinating.
It is not history, theology or mythology that interest me. It is the fact that history, theology or mythology could have alternative interpretations or explanations. I try to connect the dots between the past and the present.
'Rozabal' was theological while 'Chanakya' is political. Unlike 'Rozabal,' which was about research, the aim of 'Chanakya' is plot, plot, plot, which carries the character. The common DNA, of course, is history.
I went back and researched the history of gospel; where it came from, slavery times, communicating with each other without their master knowing what they are saying, and that gospel artists view themselves differently.
I have a degree in European history, which didn't necessarily have any direct impact on my career, but I'm grateful I studied something other than acting in college.
I didn't know at all I wanted to do TV. I thought I might go to law school. I might want to become a history professor.
