I didn't understand key signatures or anything, you know. I'd say silly things at the top of a trumpet part like, 'Note, when you play B naturals, make the B naturals a half step lower because they sound funny if they're B naturals.' And some guy sai...
I was also lucky to play for an owner, Bud Selig, who truly cared about his players. He'd call me into his office once in a while when he knew things weren't going so well. And it's funny. Every time I left there I always felt like something good was...
I think Amy Poehler and Tina Fey have done so much for women in comedy in the sense that they've normalized it. You don't think, 'I'm going to watch that comedy starring a woman,' you think, 'I'm going to watch that funny show.' They refuse to play t...
I injured myself quite badly when I was seventeen. I broke my ankle, and it didn't heal in such a way that I could keep dancing at the level I wanted to. It wasn't like, 'Oh my god, I'll never play the violin again.' I could, but not at the level I w...
I never played sports or got into the whole guy camaraderie of, like, 'I love you, man! Seniors forever!' So suddenly being in the military with these guys who were under these very heightened circumstances, isolated from their families, living this ...
I can't think of a single one of my plays that does not represent a coincidence between an external and an internal event. Something outside of me, outside even my own life, something I read in a newspaper or witness on the street, something I see or...
I grew up when one of America's greatest black playwrights, August Wilson, was writing about life in Pittsburgh, but I never saw myself in any of his straight-male plays. And then I see 'Angels,' which was so honest and painful, and it had this black...
For instance, he says I let him play golf, and he says, he lets me be miserable in my job. Now - that doesn't quite sound right, does it? But nonetheless, I think for the first time in my life, I'm not going to be miserable in my life when I come and...
I've never been one for late nights, which is why I have always preferred making films to theatre. A play takes over your life: you start to feel sick at lunchtime, and by mid-afternoon, you're wishing for a bomb scare so the whole thing will be call...
If I look back, my mother was always out. I can remember the perfume and her scarlet chiffon dress and crystal beads, going to a party. She used to play her violin at restaurants later on in life and at old people's homes. She loved the races, which ...
Technically, my first acting job was in one of my videos for a song called 'Retrospect For Life,' which Lauryn Hill directed and featured an actress by the name of N'bushe Wright, who played my girlfriend who was about to be pregnant. I remember bein...
If you work hard in real life, people tend to get in your way - either from inertia or prejudice - and they stop you achieving things. It's the worst thing about real life compared with sports, where you generally get what you deserve: if you're the ...
I purely attribute my 'hamming it up' quality to growing up with three older brothers and just being like a tomboy my whole life. Literally, my mother had to be like, 'Honey, there's a certain point where you have to start wearing a shirt.' You know,...
With 'Love & Basketball,' I played ball my whole life and did track at UCLA. So, I'm an athlete. And it was very important for me to get it right. I started with casting: As an athlete, there's nothing worse for me than watching a sports movie and th...
If someone was making a movie about F1 in the last six months, they wouldn't need to add a Hollywood ending. If they do make that movie, it's got to be 'The Curious Case Of Jenson Button,' where I've lived my life backwards. I'd like Johnny Depp to p...
My life is extremely full and wretchedly busy, and I feel that while my life drains energy from my work, my work in turn drains energy from my life. The result is, I am always playing catch-up spiritually. That is my thorn.
One of the questions I get asked a lot is, 'What do you do to stay in shape?' My glib answer is, 'I play.' But I mean it. Sure, I go to the gym, but I don't spend my life there. Most of my activity is outdoors, whether it's basketball or mountain bik...
I am playing with the assumptions that we have in our everyday life when we are tripped up or fooled and we learn something, that makes things exciting - I am having fun with that stuff, but you have to manage it so it doesn't get too cute, that's wh...
Movies are this thing that came into my life, and it still feels pretend in some way. I kind of do this thing, and I never really accepted this idea that I'm a film actor. That's what I do. I feel like I'm a theater actor that started doing films. Mo...
The thought processes that go through my head when I'm playing a game compared to the thought processes in real life are very, very different. And they're more interesting to me than what you think about when you're doing the dishes, cleaning the yar...
All my life, I have taken inventory at intervals. For example, when I became a movie actor and suddenly I had to deal with fame, money and playing so many roles, I lost myself. I said, 'Who am I?' And I wrote my first book to deal with that, 'The Rag...
