I've been fortunate in my career to have the opportunity to pick and choose the parts I play. I've also been lucky to always be involved with quality actors, quality directors, quality writers.
Sometimes I think your intellect can get in your way as an actor or an artist. When you come from a world of improv and comedy, you're able to let it flicker and fall out.
Film is an emotional medium; it's not a logical medium. It's not an intellectual medium, so every decision you make as a filmmaker and an actor has to be emotional in some way, even in the rejection of logic.
Creative people are very insecure people because they don't know whether people like them or are in awe of them. That insecurity always comes out. It makes them a better actor, I feel.
Most actors I know come from a screwed up background, so it makes sense that if you can walk on to a space and recreate your reality, then that's the place that will become very dear.
Basically, you're selling a world as an actor, right? I mean it's like any sales person: if you believe in your product, you know your product, you sell it a lot better.
TV is very much a producer and writer or creator-driven machine in the States. And I'm the kind of actor that needs to be pushed and have someone on my case a little bit, so I suffer from that.
I didn't really know exactly the point where I wanted to be an actor. But I know at this point, because I never went to college, I don't really have anything to fall back on.
You can't just tell actors, especially young ones, to 'act happy' and expect them to do it. They must in some essential way be happy.
All the dialogue on tape, and we'd play the tape in performance. Then I thought it'd be interesting if the actor's repeated what they heard on the tape, but at a slower speed, so we'd get a web of language.
It makes me proud, and it makes me scared. More than anything, I want to be an actor and I want to keep working, and I think there's a danger in being perceived as a poster boy for something.
As actors, for the most part, there's that neuroses most of us possess where, in a day of watching, this character get killed off of this show, and that character get killed off of that show - one never knows.
The reason I'm an actor and am trying to make my way in drama is to move people, to affect people, to gain a response - so these people who come up to you in the street are your audience.
There are a lot of actors who will watch the monitors. They'll do a scene, and then the director will look back to see if he got whatever he wanted. I just find it odd to sit there and watch yourself.
I think I'm a better collaborator, in seeing the bigger picture and trying to just help that, and not be so self-centered in whatever my task is, which is being an actor.
With writing fiction, I'm either not courageous enough or just not suited for telling truths in a more conventional way. As an actor, I inhabit those characters as I'm writing them.
I've spent my entire career on horseback or on a motorcycle. It boxes you in, the way people perceive you. I read a lot of scripts. Most of 'em go to other actors.
I no longer believe that William Shakespeare the actor from Stratford was the author of the works that have been ascribed to him.
So many of these comics are just frustrated singers or actors - they want to get a gig doing a sitcom. It's paint-by-the-numbers comedy, lame joke-telling. They're drawn to it as a career move.
The more projects you do, the more actors you meet, the more people you meet, it's harder and harder to give your heart and your complete attention or absolute sincerity to that person.
I've produced before, and sometimes it's by default. In the indie level, you can't just come to set and be like, 'Oh, I'm an actor.' You have to be willing to help out, make the project happen.
