He'd searched every corner of his mind looking for ways to avoid a rendezvous with Chico. In the last twenty years, Slade had come a long way from the ghetto orphanage where he'd grown up, but the only way he could help Maria was to get in touch with...
I won't look online. The whole fan thing makes me self-conscious, which is not to say I don't appreciate it or understand it. If Mickey Mantle were around, I'm sure I'd have a ton of questions to ask him that might make him uncomfortable. I get it. T...
When I address admitted students each spring, I ask them to consider two questions: Why would Harvard be the right place for the person I am? Why would it be the right place for the person that I want to become? These questions, in my mind, get at th...
I always start drawing any job by planning out to some degree the locales and trying to nail the characters. If they're existing characters, I'll draw them several times on rough paper just to get a feeling for them. The ideal when you're drawing a c...
When Carpenter was shooting 'Vampires' in New Mexico when I was living there, I desperately tried to get a job working on that film, and I couldn't. So my first job as a PA was on a CBS movie of the week that was shooting next door, and whenever I co...
There was all this talk when Obama got elected about how we were living in a postracial world. But we're not. Until we get to the point where James Earl Jones can play, say, George Washington, race matters. You wouldn't put a white actor in blackface...
False Humanitarian's This world is full of so many false humanitarians. People who see suffering right before there eyes.These people who have enough to help a friend,a family member,an acquaintance in need. But they choose who they want to help. Bec...
I really connect with every character that I've played, just because I kinda have to; as an actor, you want to take them in and get to know them and like them; because they're evil, you kinda have to like them so that you can understand them and play...
Writing doesn’t get any easier with time or talent. If writing is easy for you, you’re probably still learning the craft. You haven’t perfected your style or landed upon your “voice.” You haven’t learned to analyze your writing with a cri...
People say my films are dark. But like lightness, darkness stems from a reflection of the world. The thing is, I get these ideas that I truly fall in love with. And a good movie idea is often like a girl you're in love with, but you know she's not th...
Rather than literally burning the midnight oil, which he judged to be unhealthy, John Adams advised his son to make the most of college by developing an inquisitive outlook that would prompt him to get to know the most exceptional scholars and questi...
And that's one thing that helps me is I learn it blandly, vanilla, then I don't try to act it too soon because you start to act it, and you kind of go away from what the next sentence is, what the next paragraph is. So get it down so it kind of can -...
The very first concert I ever went to was a Green Day concert when I was 12 years old, at the Hershey Centre in Mississauga, Ont., and I remember right after seeing them perform I started a band, and I wanted to get up in front of people and start pe...
Sometimes you have to let go a little bit and travel the path of least resistance but this doesn’t mean that you quit when things get tough, as you are working towards a goal! It just means that you may only be able to see a rough draft of your fin...
I'm starting to shake it off, I am quite self-conscious, and it's only when I'm playing roles that I can escape that. The older I get, the more people tell me it's absolutely fine to be the way you are with all your quirks and nuances, and I wish I'd...
Chris Cooper once told me to never have any regrets. After Chris said that to me, I walk into every scene thinking, 'exhaust every possibility.' Once you get to a certain place, it's like you just deliver everything you've got. Don't have any regrets...
I rebelled by not getting straight A's and not following the path that my elder sister did. She was valedictorian and is very exemplary in her way. I look a lot like her, so I just had to do the opposite. Not that I got bad grades, but I was all abou...
I have decided now that my mother should be the GPS woman, don't you think? That would be fantastic: 'Make a left in 11 miles. Get over now - I want you to be prepared. Turn right on Elm Street, I want to see if Myrna Rosenblatt is still alive. Make ...
I dunno about you, but I've always fancied knocking off early for a quiet night in with Call The Midwife. Do you get that here, sir?" "No," I told him. For some reason a smile was stuck on my face and it was taking an effort to shift it. "Pity," he s...
I think all of us thought that by the '70s, at the latest the '80s, all the world's problems would be solved and everyone would be getting along fine. And instead we saw that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated that year, Robert F. Kennedy died. ...
There's a very passionate pro-chewing movement on the Internet called Chewdiasm. They say that we should be chewing 50 to 100 times per mouthful, which is insane. I tried that. It takes like a day and a half to eat a sandwich. But their basic idea is...
