I was very serene, and I still am, until I start talking in another voice, then suddenly I have a lot of volume and I'm frantic. But I didn't want to be one of those people who's always talking in accents in real life, so I started doing sketch comed...
We all come to the point where it's time to get yourself straight, as a businesswoman, a mother, whatever you are in life. It's tough love but it's also being real with yourself. It's important to take those rose-coloured glasses off and see what's g...
I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment. In fact, maybe that's really it. In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing.
With 'Hip-Hop Saved My Life,' I attempted to make 'Kick, Push,' but for rappers. To give a real basic play-by-play of the life of a rapper before he makes it - if he ever makes it, because you can get stuck in that and be trying to make it for the re...
Truth be told, I hear stories every day that would make you say, 'If you put that in a movie, you wouldn't believe it.' Real life really is kinda incredible; the stories from people's actual lives defy credibility. People's lives are messy, humans ar...
Always write as if you are talking to someone. It works. Don't put on any fancy phrases or accents or things you wouldn't say in real life. Say someone cried - don't say: 'tears coursed down her face'. Take it nice and easy, don't try to impress.
I don't dislike any of my exes. If I took time to form a relationship, it's gonna hurt when we move on, but are you puttin' White-Out over all that beautiful time together? That was real time in your life. It's connected to where you are today.
Michael Clarke Duncan and I met at a music festival that was honoring films, and we happened to be seated next to each other at the dinner, and we just hit it off and kept in touch ever since. He was just the gentle giant in real life like you would ...
I think one of the things that people tend to forget is that poets do write out of life. It isn't some set piece that then gets put up on the shelf, but that the impetus, the real instigation for poetry is everything that's happening around us.
I think a lot of people mistake my confidence on stage for cockiness in real life, and that's actually farthest from the truth. When I'm on stage, I'm that confident and that cocky because I have a microphone in my hand, and there's a few thousand pe...
And the nice thing about writing a novel is you take your time, you sit with the character sometimes nine years, you look very deeply at a situation, unlike in real life when we just kind of snap something out.
I don't believe in pretending to be someone else. I'm what I actually am in real life. For instance, like any normal girl, I fight with my mother. I mean, it is just fine. In fact, I fight daily with my mother.
Ninety per cent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves - so how can we know anyone e...
After I left college, I went to work at the Royal Opera House in London, which became a real catalyst for me because it made me realize that I was interested in cinema and in the way life is thrust at you. So I started making films.
When I was in college, I did sort of want to be a journalist. Being an actor, you kind of have the same interest. You go into a story, and you tell it from your point of view for people who aren't there. That's what an actor does with a character. Bu...
There is a fuzzy but real distinction that can and I believe should be made, between patriotism, which is attachment to a way of life, and nationalism, which is the insistence that your way of life deserves to rule over other ways of life.
If I book a table at a pub, or I've got an appointment at an optician's or something, I'll walk in and I'll say, 'This is Tom Jones here,' And they'll go 'Awww, I thought it was gonna be him.' They think it's gonna be the real guy. I've been ridicule...
Here's the bottom line: I can't play someone if I can't figure out what he cares about. Everybody cares about something, even a rough character. It defines where we step in life. As soon as you find out what somebody cares about, then it all gets rea...
There are two sides to me. One is the writer. That's a savage person who looks at everything as a story and, you know, wants to use real life in his books. The other part is the Midwesterner, who, you know, wants to say nice things about people and b...
My first ever sex scene in a movie was in 'Superbad.' Because I was 17, for legal reasons my mother had to be on the set. It was real awkward, but it worked out OK because when I watched the movie with her, the sex scene wasn't awkward because she'd ...
He can't even be at a casual read and not be creating the whole thing in his mind. I remember feeling very awed about how much he still seems to be so in love with it, and so dedicated to making everything really real and really spontaneous.
