What I believe will make my acting career successful going forward is hard work. I like to challenge myself. Then it's the people I meet and choosing the projects I want to work on correctly. There's a lot of characters I can play.
My grandfather had been on the New York City force with his 11 brothers around the turn of the century. He was killed in the line of duty. My father, who was 16, was the oldest son, so he had to quit school and go to work to support his mother.
Every job is a blessing. Everyone has to take into account what is available. Are you paying rent, who do you get to work with? There are a lot of variables in the job. What I'm drawn to is things that I don't completely understand maybe, and want to...
I work a lot, and it's kind of like, you meet people, and you just click. It's not like I'm looking at something and thinking: 'South Park' - how do I get on that?' I just became friends with those guys first. They're nice guys.
I unloaded planes for UPS in Louisville, Kentucky. It only was bad because it was called 'Earn to Learn,' where you pay for your tuition for college, but you have to work graveyard shift - midnight to eight A.M. - and then go to school at nine or 10 ...
I was working in Lexington when I recognized this actor, Michael Shannon, and I was like, 'What do you do?' He told me to get into a theater company, so I got into a theater company near my hometown. I was a carpenter there. And then I slowly got som...
I usually go make-up free when I'm not working. Because I work so much, during the free days that I have I like to let my skin breathe, but of course I'm girly so I like to put on some blush and some mascara.
When I decided I wanted to go to drama school, I realized that a lot of the actors whose careers I really admire and whose work I really admire were English and English trained. I felt there was a real vocational feel to work in the U.K.
The big question is always, 'Eyes or lips?' I tend to go with the eyes because I've got a lot more material to work with now - and it saves me from reapplying lipstick! I'm a pretty low-maintenance person and it's too excessive to exaggerate both the...
When I was 18 I went to college for two years and didn't work for a year which was essential for me, because my identity had been so influenced by my being an actor and I think I just needed to discover what it was to be myself, divorced from all tha...
I was in the Pritikin Center in Santa Monica once, trying to lose 30 or 40 pounds in a month. I'd work... on a treadmill and with the weights, but it was driving me nuts. So I escaped. Tom Arnold picked me up and we went to Le Dome and had tons of de...
People don't realize that doing a horror movie is hard work. You're out there all day screaming your lungs out, breathing in toxic make-up fumes, rolling around in the dirt, getting your eyebrows burned off - it's not like doing a sitcom.
A baby's existence for the first three months is a one-way street. One person is doing all the work and the other is crying, sleeping and pooping. So the first moment when you're actually able to do something and they acknowledge your presence, that'...
I was at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where I thought, in my naivete, I'd stay for the rest of my career. I'd thought I'd work up through the ranks and go from spear carrier - or in my case, the eunuch, which was several rungs below the spear carri...
Unlike me, a lot of child actors are very short, which is why they work. So when they're 15 they can play 11 or when they're 18 they can play 14. They look young for so long, they have abilities a much younger kid wouldn't have.
In my case, I've always been interested in law enforcement. I've always dabbled in law enforcement in between gigs, quite honestly. Back before things really began to pop off for me, I would work in private security for companies and stuff.
It still amazes me when I look at some of the films I've been a part of, and some of the people I've gotten to meet and work with. I also look back sometimes and realize that I was lucky to have lived through them and even to have survived them, at t...
You work on a play or movie, you have the whole script, so you're constructing a performance based on the bible that you have. In TV, you don't, so to actually invest in that and let that be the exciting part is terrifying and certainly leaves room f...
Especially with Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, I can't tell necessarily the nitty gritty of what you're really up to. I'm just seeing the performance of all the work you're doing and the look you're giving; it's very hard to get to the center. I...
My mentor Jon Simmons introduced me to the Stanislavski system, which is so heavy on back-story. So you write and write and write these back stories about a character and then you throw it away. So then on set, if it doesn't come, then you didn't do ...
I am used to doing dramatic work, but its fun to grab a gun, and go running around, getting beat-up. Its fun to do the action stuff, because it is really physical. There is nothing like getting into a character by getting beaten up physically.
