Most people go to the office and sit at a desk. When firefighters go to the office, we might birth a baby in the morning, save a drowning surfer in the afternoon, and run into a fire at night. What could be more interesting than that?
When I was nine, I started reading Homer. I would get up at four o'clock in the morning, before I had to go to school, in third or fourth grade, and, for several hours, I would read 'The Iliad' or 'The Odyssey.'
It was important on The Shipping News to have my house far enough away from each location so I had this time in the morning to think about my shots and still remain open to surprises once I got to the set.
Every writer has their rituals. For me, it's morning walks along the beach. And then, in my study I have a huge painting of the Black Madonna hung over my desk, and quite a few pictures of Mary around me for inspiration.
When it comes to classic Disney, I've got it in my DNA. I mean, the guy who trained me, the man who mentored me when I first came to the Studio was Eric Larson, one of Walt's Nine Old Men.
I'm always represented as a bit of a class warrior - a bit Down With Men and Down With Middle-Class People. Whereas I'm actually very fond of men and am middle-class. I even went to boarding school in Perthshire.
I do like men and I had, you know, a guy in high school that I wanted to marry desperately. He's the mayor of some small town in Texas. I could be the mayor's wife right now.
The noblest men of all ages, Christian saints of the most transcendent spirituality have attained their wonderful development through the spiritual rays of this planet because of the intense feeling of Oneness with the divine and with all that lives ...
Growing up in the '70s, it was only a few years before that when men started to grow their hair long. And in the '70s, people were pushing the envelope a little farther, with men having even more style and piercing both their ears and wearing makeup.
My teeth are all right, but they are not American teeth, and my hair is not thick and luscious. Los Angeles is dense with beautiful people, and most of the men who are aspiring actors are 5ft 5in, so I tower above them.
I honestly think that it automatically hurts me if I said that I supported the war in Iraq and I support the troops. That automatically kills me for getting a bunch of movies, a bunch of TV shows. People don't want to hear from me.
In all my science fiction movies, I try to blend the familiar with the futuristic so as not to be too off-putting to the audience. There is always something familiar they can grab onto.
I remember watching the Blu-ray, and also when they first released it on DVD in the collection of all three movies of 'The Godfather,' and seeing all of those scenes that they cut out, and there wasn't a single one of them that I wished they had kept...
Ray: [while brushing teeth] Altogether, I've had five pints of beer and six bottles... no... six pints of beer and seven bottles, and you know what? I'm not even pissed.
[grabbing Abby from behind after breaking into Ray's house] Marty: Lover boy really oughta lock his door. Lotta nuts out there.
As an actor, if you're just sitting and staring and you don't know who you are in your own mind, it's vacant. And sometimes the camera is an X-ray machine, it can pick it up.
When you have a natural genetic tan developed over centuries and many generations, the idea of soaking up rays by the pool has never made sense.
This is the way I think about politics: We want two diametrically opposed things from a politician. On one hand we want them to be bastions of moral integrity, perfect people, saints. And on the other hand, we want them to be effective leaders.
A lot of people have asked me whether I am a cynic or take a cynical view of politics and are often surprised when I say that I consider myself an optimist, but an optimist dressed in the robes of a realist.
I've been interested in American politics since I was eight. That was in 1968. It was an interesting year. I was a huge Eugene McCarthy supporter, so I guess he was the first senator I really knew about and cared about.
My two interests are spirituality and politics. I would mesh them in some way; maybe try to figure out the politics of spirituality, or the spirituality of politics. Or maybe come up with this really crazy naive solution for the end of civilization.
