By the way, movies are like sporting events in that you're as good as the movie you're in. You can sit in a room for 20 years and go do a movie and you can just kill in it and you move to the head of the line again. By the same token, you can do five...
It was a sort of organic thing. I never went, 'I must be an actress.' I thought, 'I think I could do this. I think I could be good at this.' I would just get sort of hungry when I read something I thought I can do well, whether it was in books or in ...
One thing I've learned through all the ups and downs is that if you're doing things right, then you have a core group of people. Not just a core group like your homies or your buddies, but a group of people that has a good influence on you, who you r...
When I sit down to write, I don't think, 'OK, what is the next David O. Russell film I can write, or what is Harvey Weinstein going to want to buy?' Or even, 'What are filmgoers going to want.' I try to think, tell a good story. Just do what you do.
On 'Lab Rats,' I read the script probably three or four times before we ever even do a table read because I want to be completely prepared. And I want to know exactly which beats I have to hit and where I need to make something comical. Some lines ne...
Every movie I do, I always use things that have happened in my life. Funny moments, anything. If it just sticks out I'll write it down and use that, too, because it has to come out of you. But no one can work when they're depressed. I don't think I'd...
All I can tell you is that you cannot make choices in your own career, either career choices or choices when you're actually working as an actor, based on trying to downplay or live up to a comparison with somebody else. You just can't do that. You h...
I always wanted to direct. I always saw myself as a director. I know that I've definitely found what I should be doing with my life. In my life, as far as my career goes, I always felt, as an actor, that it was something that would just be a temporar...
I think that what we need to do is say, 'Reading is going to really affect your life.' You take a black man who doesn't have a job, but you say to him, 'Look, you can make a difference in your child's life, just by reading to him for 30 minutes a day...
Many movie stars or American Idol contestants sort of fall into theater... and say, 'Oh, yeah, I would love to do theater.' And then they get here and say, 'Oh, wait a minute, this actually is a craft!' It's not just show up one day and do it. It's s...
There's a little bit of gospel in everything I do. But I don't know if I will ever do a gospel album. There's a big universe out here, and I don't want to just sing to the church. I want to sing to the world and bring them a message of love. I love g...
It was always that detail that drove me. Ever since I was a little kid, I used to get into the nitty gritty... when I was drawing army tanks or monsters, I'd do every nut and rivet, and I'd do every scale on the dragon's back. It was just the way I w...
Once you really understand your role... that's why I think actors get lost in a series. Everybody wants to be the quarterback or the game-winning wide receiver. I've been around long enough and done enough stuff to where I don't feel that way. I just...
At the end of the day, the Golden Rule is called the Golden Rule for a reason - do unto others as you would have done to you. In terms of commandments you could probably just do that one and you would be well off. If everybody could adhere to that on...
Since we do in reality need one another ("it is not good for man to be alone"), then the failure of this need to appear as Need-love in consciousness - in other words, the illusory feeling that it is good for us to be alone - is a Bad spiritual sympt...
I don't want to live in the kind of world where we don't look out for each other. Not just the people that are close to us, but anybody who needs a helping hand. I cant change the way anybody else thinks, or what they choose to do, but I can do my bi...
I kept thinking, 'How do you make a modern musical?' Then it became clear that I could do it just like a small indie art-house movie, very naturalistically. I could create a world where it's o.k. to break into song, without an orchestra coming up out...
I think in many ways, I'm sort of a blank canvas, because in many ways, I'm just observing the world and the people around me and their characters and letting them kind of explode off me and to find out why they're doing what they're doing. But then ...
I have been doing this since I was 10 years old. It wasn't like I was an overnight hit. I think when that happens to some actors - they just don't know what to do with themselves. You don't know how to cope with friends and all of a sudden not being ...
When I hear other artists talk, they talk about 'How come radio's not playing my song?' Well, you have to look at it under a microscope and know that each station is just trying to do what's right for their market, and it's scary for a radio station ...
I wanted 'Southland' to feel immediate, like a ride-along, and to make it the closest thing possible to a cop reality show. We've got real cops out there every day. A lot of times we'll say, 'You guys just do what you normally do and we'll film it.'
