A lot of times, I feel like people come up to me because they think I'm like my character in 'Easy A', or because they've seen me in interviews, but really what they're a fan of is a movie or a character.
You should never rely on interviews with musicians as being factual. Most of them are mangled and even have made up stuff in them, that is to say, made up stuff by the writer or editor.
Just as someone who's been interested in radio and programming for so long, I can usually tell when an interviewer is doing a segment just to fill a programming slot. They ask questions, but they don't care about the answers.
I don't try to be completely calculating in everything I say and do, but there's no way I'm going to talk. There's no reason to. And that's why I'm such a boring interview, because I don't go for the shock value, or smartass answers.
CBS news anchor Dan Rather has interviewed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. When asked what it was like to talk to a crazy man, Saddam said, 'It's not so bad.'
Many interviewers when they come to talk to me, think they're being progressive by not mentioning in their stories any longer that I'm black. I tell them, 'Don't stop now. If I shot somebody you'd mention it.'
Every time you go to see Hamlet you don't expect it to have a happy ending...you're still enthralled. (Interview BBC Radio 4 Today 17 October 2012.)
I'm a reporter - if I don't interview someone, I don't have much to say, and I definitely can't just sit down and knock out 800 words on any subject you give me.
To me, history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me, it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is." [ ; NEH 2003 Jefferson Lecturer interview profi...
What makes me furious, not just because we're in an interview, but I don't like when writers take your words and put them somewhere else, in the wrong context in their own article about you.
There comes a moment during a job interview when you're still talking, but you might as well take off your shoes.
Much is written about the Batman because he is publicly exposed in print. Very little is known personally about his creator, because I haven't given out that many interviews.
I'm a singer, not a politician, and I think you don't want the two to get confused. It's not OK to be on CNN talking about people starving and then tell the interviewer that your new album is coming out in six months.
When I'm interviewing someone, I want to make sure that he thought enough to take care of himself - to dress appropriately and to groom himself properly.
As to a media personality, well that just happened in large measure because people found me amusing, and I did lots and lots of T.V. news interview shows.
When I was in England doing Romeo and Juliet as a child star, I was interviewed by the British press, who are even more vicious and cruel than the Americans. So I have been extremely guarded ever since.
I wanted to be the perfect artist. I'd do three hours of media interviews a day, going to every radio station I could squeeze in. I'd sign autographs after the show until everybody left.
I want to know where joy lives. I'd interview scientists, religious leaders and heads of state. I'd want to find out exactly what makes people happy. I'd want to look into the biology, the chemistry of the human brain.
Don't see the point in reading ghost-written autobiographies, even though some of these published lives may fascinate me. The 'ghost' is always present, manipulating an interview into first-person singular text, and it feels like I'm reading a lie.
I don't have a real plan when I do an interview. I have some themes that I want to hit. But I don't have a set list of questions that I knock off.
I say making movies is like eating a sandwich of shit. Sometimes you get more bread, sometimes less bread, but you always get shit." (Guardian interview 2006)
