From the moment I went to Hollywood for the first time, I was accused by various people of selling out. So I feel I've done my sell-out films already. I've sold everything! I've sold every piece of soul I ever had!
The first time I went to Abbey Road and put those headphones on, I discovered I had two voices. I no longer had to shout in the studio, but I can't knock the Cavern or the other clubs because they gave me my strong voice.
It wasn't until I went to Korea out of high school and got exposed to the martial arts for the first time and was just completely enamored with the physical ability of the martial arts and making my black belt.
I got told so many times I needed a manager. For a long time I resisted, and I finally got one so I can pay my mortgage, and it helped me from becoming a homeless person.
I don't think it's ungracious to seek cosmetic help - it has crossed my mind from time to time, and I have been tempted. But it's too short-term. Once you start down that road, you have to keep going.
I saw Mercury Prize-winners Alt-J for the first time recently, touring their debut album 'An Awesome Wave,' and I'm still riding the high: they're the most musically dynamic and exciting band to have poured tune into my lug holes live since Bellowhea...
I was 'impressed' by Hugh Jackman for five seconds the first time I met him, but as soon as he opened his mouth and shook my hand, I felt comfortable. He made me feel like I was one of his friends.
If actors could actually make a living doing theater, that would be my first choice. Sitcoms are the closest thing to being onstage in front of an audience. If I had to choose, it would be theater and doing the occasional movie once in a while, and s...
The first time I had sat down to a meal I had grown on my own, along with a bottle of wine that we had made, I burst into tears. To be in touch and be in tune with that is an extraordinary gift.
I record stuff all the time, like little vocal things. I write random things down... Sometimes I just get things stuck in my head and I record them, and that actually becomes a song quite a lot of the time.
I've been around a long time, and I've been interested in memory for a long time. And one of my earlier interests in molecular biology of memory led me to define the switch that converts short term to long term memory.
It's only because I feel like such a philistine spending all that time in hair and makeup that I started to knit. I used to spend that time studying Italian and French. Then after I had two kids, my brain turned to mush and I took up knitting.
My ultimate is Peter Sellers - his ability to go broad and somehow humanize that and be hilarious at the same time. He was just relatable, real at the same time as insane. I find Ricky Gervais absolutely hilarious. Steve Martin is another hero of min...
My parents didn't want me to be a regular in a series. I was a working actor from time to time but they thought was a little too much being a star of a series. They wanted me to have a slightly more normal childhood.
I don't rehearse with my actors... the first rehearsal is the first time we turn the camera on... Sydney Pollack never rehearsed his actors, and I found out that's allowed... so you film reactions; you don't create them.
In high school I spent most of my time in jeans and T-shirts or Juicy sweats. We're such a laid-back town. I mean, people wore bikinis under their clothes half the time, so you didn't really get dressed up to go to school.
It's not really that I've been an advocate for hearing aids for a long time, it's just that I've been losing my hearing for a long time! So it's actually very important for me because I'm actually hearing impaired and I simply want to hear better!
Sadly, the only constant in my writing environment stems from some inexplicable need to listen to the news. CNN loops over and over in the background from the time I wake until the time I finally, blessedly, fall asleep.
I'm doing stand-up comedy. I'm working on a one-woman show about how I don't like my baby. There is a period of time where a baby is born where the next 3 months is harrowing. A lot of people say it's the most wonderful time, but for me it was harrow...
I think by the time I was born, my parents had pretty well run the gauntlet with their kids. The novelty had kind of worn off by the time the twelfth child was born. I was lucky to get fed and changed, picked up and taken to school.
The first time I stepped onto the rooftop of the Potala Palace in Lhasa in 1985, I felt, as never before or since, as if I was stepping onto the rooftop of my being: onto some dimension of consciousness that I'd never visited before.
