Film and theater are about misdirection and making the audience see something. I find it interesting. One of the things we do in 'True Blood' is shoot all of our stunts in camera. Instead of doing some kind of visual effect, we try to make it happen.
There was a goblin, or a trickster or a warrior. A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. Nothing could stop it or hold it or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the...
A lot of critics sometimes get into analyzing the way actors direct versus non-actors directing. And they really always miss it. It's one of those things where, by not being practitioners, they just came up with something that made sense to them.
One of the things the United States does well is building coalitions. What the U.S. knows is that if you don't have a coalition with you, you will have a coalition against you. I don't want to see China and Russia on the side of Iran more strongly th...
For one thing, before the 20th century, there were plenty of genocides. We tend to forget about them, partly because they weren't as well documented and partly because, until recently, people didn't care. We used euphemisms like 'sackings' and 'siege...
It's one thing to say, 'I don't like what you said to me and I find it rude and offensive,' but the moment you threaten violence in return, you've taken it to another level, where you lose whatever credibility you had.
While it is easy to get caught up in the beliefs and attitudes of others, it is easier still to make one’s self a victim of circumstance. Victims of circumstance believe they have no power over their lives, since they are merely the play-things of ...
I see a lot of actors that are doing things to please their coaches, their teachers in the past. They say 'No' to parts they should have said 'Yes' to simply because of the opinion of people in their past. I have no one in my past who is judging me a...
Trying to be a leader in a sort of very atypical workplace like 'Saturday Night Live' forces you to realize that no one wants you to be their leader. If you can help them get their thing on TV or whatever, they want that. But no adult is looking for ...
One of the reasons I don't have a TV is, if I have a TV, then I don't do other things. At least for me, I'd rather just download the programs I want to watch and watch them, or I can buy them on DVD.
Braves fans are one-of-a-kind. Your passion to win comes close to equaling that of the players that go out on the field each and every game. But when the team goes through rough patches, you're there to encourage and cheer and believe that things wil...
Goblin tea resembles a nice cup of Earl Grey in much the same way that a catfish resembles the common tabby. They share a name, but one is a nice thing to curl up with on a rainy afternoon, and the other is found in the muck at the bottom of polluted...
When you focus on the positive, the blessings and the humor and just do your thing and you stop worrying SO much about what every one else is thinking and doing and STOP taking life way too seriously... Awesomeness happens!
I have done a few roles that I've never watched, and if I happen to be flicking through channels and one pops up, I quickly move on. It's hard enough to sustain some self confidence without being reminded of things we'd rather not revisit but, in the...
I never got picked on, but I never had a lot of friends. When I talked to my parents about it, they said, 'They're just jealous because you're beautiful and talented.' It was probably one of the worst things they could have told me, because I became ...
The stunning thing about the world as it is, is that we have a tremendously large problem in it: namely, one-third of all human deaths, 80-million every year from poverty-related causes, trivial diseases and so on, and stunningly, nobody is really pa...
Being a novelist is not the sort of thing we can shut off. It infests every bit of us until we lose the boundary between Person and Writer, like one of those color charts where it is impossible to say where the blue stops and the red begins.
I can do one of two things. I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice Roosevelt. (His 19-year-old daughter.) I cannot possibly do both.
It appears a bold thing to say so when one sees how much many a modern author who knows how to make a skilful use of the Book of Chronicles has to tell about the tabernacle.
So the only things I was being allowed to audition for were small roles in comedies. It broke my heart. No one would see me for anything else. I knew, in order to open up my career, I had to leave or that's all I would ever be given.
Anyone can become a game show host. It simply requires a giant, narcissistic ego and an inability to do anything else. The closest thing to school I did was looking in the mirror one hundred times a day and repeating, 'People should listen to you tal...
