I hadn't done just a straight-out comedy in a long time, just letting an ensemble do really good character acting, having them carry the movie as in my earlier pictures.
Comedy is the most difficult. Comic timing is something which you either have it in you, or you don't. You have to have a good sense of humour to be able to understand it. A split second can make you lose the punch.
I had no musical or athletic ability, and I wasn't particularly good looking. Comedy was something I could do for attention.
This to me is the secret comedy of all author interviews, down through the ages, even the good ones in the 'Paris Review' and places. They're all acting. It's like watching a person in a play.
I've played such serious characters that no one sees me the way I actually am, which is completely cheesy and goofy, so it would be fun to do a romantic comedy and just have a good laugh.
Right now, I'd like to just continue on a series where I am doing good work with a balance of comedy and drama. That and do occasional features and movies.
I do all these various activities like painting and writing, comedy and films probably because not that I'm good at everything but because I'm not good at any of these things.
I was definitely not the kid that just wanted to be famous for no reason whatsoever and then happened to find comedy. Fame and all that stuff have always been slightly terrifying to me, and it makes me very anxious.
A lot of stand-up comedy guys, when they get a little famous, just give up their stand-up career, and it cancels out the thing that set them apart.
A talk show is about having a look at a famous face, a bit of stand-up comedy, knockabout stuff - an interview is what Barbara Walters or Connie Chung does in the States, in-depth, done properly.
I never looked at my future as comedy. Even at Second City, I always thought of it as acting. I knew I was going to be an actor financially, emotionally, egotistically.
With comedy, don't try to be funny. That's really helped me. Just say the lines as you would say them, interact with other characters, and try to make it as real as possible. It will come out funny.
Something about New York, man: You can do more comedy there probably than you can anywhere in the world. If you're interested in being funny, New York is the place to go.
TV is easier: it's all planned out for you, and the audience is there to see a show and they are all pumped up, but when you are in a comedy club, you have to be really funny to win them over. To me, that's more pure.
I mean, sometimes... a comedian becomes an actor, and they just don't deliver, because the bottom line of comedy is to be funny, and the bottom line of acting is to be truthful, and they get that mixed up sometimes, or don't even notice that that's t...
One of my favorite comedies is 'Groundhog Day' and 'Scrooged.' I love Bill Murray, and I think he's a great example of an actor who is funny.
I never analyze stuff with comedy because it's boring. It makes you stop being funny. Just be who you are and do what you do, and you're either funny or you're not.
You can't do every movie - although I do a lot of them - and the thing I'm longing to do is... it's not that I think I'm funny... but I long to do a situation comedy.
Shakespeare wrote great plays that we're still watching all these years later. Charlie Chaplin made great comedies and they are still as funny today as they ever were.
If you get a good comedy once a year, man, that's pretty good. I may be pickier than some, but still, there aren't that many movies that are really, truly, honestly that funny.
For years, it's driven me crazy that women don't have better roles, especially in comedies. I know so many funny women but I always felt... misogynist streak is too strong a term - but a dismissiveness.
