Every night before bed, I drop down to the floor and do 20 sit-ups, 5 push-ups and stretching. No matter what the day has been like, I drop and give myself 20 every single night.
We actors have it pretty easy and pretty hard. Easy 'cause we have a meal provided to us every 6 hours every day and craft services. The hard part is staying fit under those circumstances.
Actors only have our bodies, voices, and the text. So I think actors need to have a fit and in-tune body. I was always very disciplined in wanting to have that. That's one of my favorite things - playing a role with a physical requirement.
When I first got to New York, all I did was musicals. After a few years I had to make a conscious choice to close the door on musicals, because I was getting pigeon-holed as a musical theater performer.
There were no examples of girls like myself becoming successful actresses. To be an actress in England was a serious, upper-middle class girl's profession. I just thought I would never be accepted unless I pretended to become somebody I wasn't.
The working classes in England were always sentimental, and the Irish and Scots and Welsh. The upper-class English are the stiff-upper-lipped ones. And the middle class. They're the ones who are crippled emotionally because they can't move up, and th...
Myself, I happen to be married to an African-American woman, and we're together 17 years. We took a few trips to the South 15 years ago, and we were sobered by some of the reactions people had - how subtle or not-so-subtle their reactions were.
For a songwriter, you don't really go to songwriting school; you learn by listening to tunes. And you try to understand them and take them apart and see what they're made of, and wonder if you can make one, too.
I always liked the idea that America is a big facade. We are all insects crawling across on the shiny hood of a Cadillac. We're all looking at the wrapping. But we won't tear the wrapping to see what lies beneath.
If you record the sound of bacon in a frying pan and play it back, it sounds like the pops and cracks on an old 33 1/3 recording. Almost exactly like that. You could substitute it for that sound.
I see a film or a TV series or a play as being this machine. It sounds quite robotic, in its description, but it's basically a machine and you're just one of the cogs that goes in it. You're not the biggest one, and you're not the smallest one. Every...
It's exciting to do something like this because usually what happens in theater is that, after the first or second reading of a play, it falls apart completely and the rehearsal process is such that you begin to pick up the pieces and put it back tog...
I've had albums out since the 1970s. I was in a musical, 'The Boy Friend,' directed by Ken Russell, and I was on Broadway in 'My One And Only' with Tommy Tune, so I've always been a singer, but I suppose people think of my modelling more.
My elder sister used to get the fashion magazines, and I would go through them and find things I liked and buy fabric and copy them. But I hated what I looked like. I mean, I was sooo skinny.
My one big rule for the over-40s is don't try to dress like an 18-year-old. It's possible to be 'on-trend' when you're older - you just have to look for the right stuff. You don't have to spend a fortune, either.
I come from Nigeria, and we live by the idea that it takes a village. So my entire team. I live by my team: my friends, my neighbors, my teachers - they're the people who taught me how to be a free actor.
Natasha Lyonne is fantastic on Twitter. She posts hilarious pictures. I don't even know where she finds some of them; it'll be like a random picture of a chinchilla kissing a lion or Bill Murray and Jim Belushi out on a boat or something.
I was in New York doing musicals in the theater and on Broadway before 'Orange,' so people always ask, 'Are you ever going to get to sing? Does she even sing?' But people who know me know I actually do sing.
I had to go to a mirror and look at it. I couldn't picture myself in my own head. I had no image beyond a stick figure. I wasn't a mean person as a kid, or dumb, and something has to be said to justify excluding you.
Buddhism has had a major effect on who I am and how I think about the world. What I have learned is that I like all religions, but only parts of them.
It's weird how people who are the least close to me or who've never even met me purport to be experts on the real me; and then, sadly, there are those who could be in touch with me but prefer to gossip with strangers about me instead.
