When I was doing all this acting stuff, all these kids, like, assumed, 'Oh, my God, you're on TV, and you probably have a lot of money.' And I was living in a garage.
I tentatively believe in a god. I was brought up in a fairly religious home. I think the world is compatible with reincarnation, karma, all that stuff.
After being in a studio, working on games stuff, I'm like, 'Oh my God, I wish I could just sit in my room for a week and listen to music and draw by myself.'
I never get bored talking about themes dealing with ambition, leadership and what it means to be an American. I love that stuff. I just love it. I've loved it ever since I was on 'The West Wing.'
I suffer from and enjoy an incredibly vivid dream life. A lot of times there is a sort of narrative, and other times they are just funhouses of non-linear imagery and other scary stuff.
There's a lot of stuff they don't teach you in the mythical editors' school. They don't teach you that you're going to have to spend a lot of your life in crisis management.
I have a to-do list and I have a farm I care for, and things I like to do for fun - going to movies and all that stuff. It's a painfully normal life!
When people screamed novelty the first time around talking about an ugly video and stuff I was really insulted because, hold on a minute, everyone you see in the video are real life.
You know, your whole life you're concerned about money for this and that. And then you don't have to worry about it, so you worry about other stuff.
As far as control and stuff is concerned, I never had any more in my life than for that All-Star game in 1934.
I like the idea of not having to do stuff for the money, and if I want to, I can pick indie projects for the rest of my life and be quite happy doing that.
Gangsta to us didn't have anything to do with Al Capone and stuff like that. It's just about living your life the way you want to live it. And you're not going to let nothing stop you.
I take in a lot of stuff from real life, movies, television, news and it all gets mixed in my head and somehow turns into a story idea.
I take stuff from real life and try to make a character out of it. And I try to live the world of the characters a little bit.
You promote your films; it's part of your job. You do the magazine covers and stuff, and then I try to live a really normal life. I definitely don't try to make it into any more craziness than it is.
I suppose I am one of life's naturally clumsy people; I don't drop stuff all the time, or break things, but I'm just generally a bit flustered.
In my work, I want to convince people that I'm that character. If they know everything about Lesley Manville - private life, all of that stuff - it doesn't help. So the kind of anonymity I enjoy is key.
People that were in my life for a long time turned sinister and tried to control me, and all kinds of weird stuff happened. But there was no conscience involved; that threw me more than anything.
I got out of school in 2000, and I always wanted to be on 'This American Life,' since I first started telling stories. And that, I mean, that show is a little bit of a fortress. It's really hard to get stuff on that show.
We must accept life for what it actually is - a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature.
It is one of the ironies of my life and in many lives that whenever you are the happiest, all of this stuff from the past will come pushing up and demand to be noticed.
