Drama school can't make you a brilliant actor, but you can do stuff for three years - you're not going to be fired. You should just go for it all, even the stuff you think is codswallop.
But I've never been really rebellious. I've got a lot of support and I'm not pushed so hard that I feel like I'm going to burn out, which is what happens to a lot of actors in their early twenties.
Listen, acting is not surgery, it's entertainment. You're doing something to hopefully move people, to make them laugh, to transport them. But actors are vulnerable, and the reason we're vulnerable is that we're always trying to recreate human behavi...
As a runner on a film, you are the lowest of the low, and yet you have incredible access to everyone. I can totally imagine that for actors in the middle of a Hollywood bubble, all they really want is a sense of normality, and that gopher can be a ta...
For any actor, when you're playing twin brothers, you have to be able to find the similarities between them as well as creating a difference between the two characters. If they just looked the same, what would the point of that be?
But I did on projects that I produced, that I directed, that I acted in because it was important. I want to be a filmmaker. I don't want to be an actor who directs, I want to be a director. I want to be a filmmaker. So that's a big difference.
It was like there's got to be some way to stay working and stay productive in Los Angeles. TV is that kind of thing for an actor. Unless you get stuck in one of these shows where you have to go to Vancouver.
The majority of actor kids are really competitive. But Gabby Sidibe on 'The Big C' has been a big help to me. Her career went from zero to a hundred in about one second, so she's warned me what to expect.
My parents were disappointed I didn't finish college, and they were really upset when I went to Hollywood to become an actor. I was a big disappointment to them.
I just did something on a show on UPN called 'Girlfriends' that will be on television in February. I am actually a much better actor today than I was in 1996, believe it or not.
I got an agent when I was 12, and I started working in more amateur productions well before that. But even as a kid, I never felt like a kid actor, you know? I always took myself kind of absurdly seriously.
I started, obviously, doing theater, and I always thought that I would; in a way, I always thought that I'd be a theater actor. When I was starting out, I didn't really plan on making films, actually.
You never stop thinking about technique, but really, the reason we're actors is because of the sheer joy of those few moments you get every now and again where you're totally present. The rest is just struggle and misery.
You need the actors to feel as much ownership of the performance and the direction of the story as you do to get the most out of everyone's potential. Part of it is just making sure we all have the same vision.
There are roles I want that my agency might not want me to do because of the subject matter or whatever. Or there are roles that people won't bring to me because they don't think I'll do it. And that is a big strain because an actor wants to act.
I went to a very mean school and was bullied like crazy. I was a bit of a goth with purple hair, and I was also part of the drama group, which was filled with actors and writers and wasn't really accepted by the rest of the school.
Working with Jon Hamm was super-fun because he's a brilliant actor and he's very kind. I would hang around sets for scenes that I wasn't even in because I wanted to watch how he worked.
I've seen what can happen to an actor when he's just working for the sake of working. All of a sudden it's ten years later, your career's happened, and you haven't had any control.
Unfortunately, when you're an actor you have to act. It's not like you can sit in your living room, your bedroom, your study or whatever and act with yourself. It requires having somebody to respond to.
All these actors who died before I was born, all the theaters and the artistic movements - all that stuff fills you up and makes you feel like you're the inheritor of all this information and of all its passion.
If Chevy Chase had not been an actor, he might have been a very popular guy in advertising or whatever field he would have gone into, because of his charisma.
