I had, like, two goals in my career: One was to try to get into 'Second City.' When I moved to Chicago, my goal was to try to work at 'Second City.' And beyond that, my goal was to make enough money as an actor to not do anything else but act, not ha...
We often imagine that the court serves as a sort of neutral umpire controlling the warring political branches. But this is mostly myth. The justices of the Supreme Court are themselves actors in the struggle for power, and when they intervene, they t...
Once you have an innovation culture, even those who are not scientists or engineers - poets, actors, journalists - they, as communities, embrace the meaning of what it is to be scientifically literate. They embrace the concept of an innovation cultur...
One of the reasons I'm an actor is because I was no physical specimen as a child. I wasn't athletic and didn't have any prowess in that regard. Growing up in Kentucky, most little boys were trying to get into sports, and it was very competitive, so t...
I've always remembered something Sanford Meisner, my acting teacher, told us. When you create a character, it's like making a chair, except instead of making someting out of wood, you make it out of yourself. That's the actor's craft - using yourself...
Technology has changed the fan/actor interaction quite a bit. Now it's really easy to communicate with a large group of people in a really short time, and that... opens a lot of possibilities. You can do a lot of things with it that you couldn't do b...
When you think about it, we actors are kind of prostitutes. We get paid to feign attraction and love. Other people are paying to watch us kissing someone, touching someone, doing things people in a normal monogamous relationship would never do with a...
Transformational acting was the reason why I became an actor in the first place. Your hair and make-up and the costume are the tools that you have, and it makes you feel like that person. When you look in the mirror, you don't feel like yourself, and...
Acting is something I did when I was a kid. I do act sometimes in friends' projects, but when I do, it's just for fun. It is actually a hobby for me now. I do still love stage acting, but the day-to-day process of being an actor is so exhausting and ...
I cannot tell you that I ever fell in love with the theater as an audience. I fell in love with the theater as an actor for a period of time, but I have struggled as an audience, and I struggle more now than then. I was always a movie guy.
Performing on stage is my first love - it's why I wanted to be an actor in the first place - and 'Arcadia' is the highlight of my career so far. I love the intimacy of a live theatre audience - you can really squeeze every last drop out of each scene...
As an actor, you act in order to make a living. Then, when you can make a living, you start acting because you want to do what you love to do. I need to remind myself of that a lot.
I really like writing music. That's kind of like my little hobby. I like that because sometimes you don't really have any control when you're an actor, over what you're doing next, and everything is kind of decided by other people. You're always wait...
'Words and Music' on Radio 3 is always a treat. Actors read passages of poetry and prose interspersed with music, and nobody tells you what it is. Later you can look it up online, but at the time you can't cheat.
It is jazz music that called me to be a musician and I have always sang the songs that moved me the most. Singers, like Frank Sinatra and myself, we interpret the songs that we like. Not unlike a Shakespearean actor that goes back to the greatest wor...
Of course there are some actors that are better than others and performances that are better than others, but they're always embedded in the greater film. They are mediated through the work of so many other people: the director directs, the lighter s...
I had always loved cartoons, especially 'Bugs Bunny,' and I found I enjoyed making animated films. Even a 30-second commercial involved drawing and painting, storytelling, not to mention actors, music, and sound effects.
My daughter is the most normal towards me. For her, I am just her mom. I am just a regular mom, and the actor comes after that. If she likes something that I am wearing, she tells me, and if she doesn't, she still makes it a point to let me know.
My mom had an audition for a commercial when I was about two and a half, and I ran in crying and interrupted her. They thought I was cute so they offered me a commercial role. My mom was skeptical and a bit nervous about the child actor thing, but I ...
I think my mom is the inspiration of me wanting to do film and TV and be an actor because she loved film so much. She loved, like, horror films and action films, so growing up, she loved watching all the Charles Bronson films and all the westerns.
In films, you are a commodity. You are a look, something that the camera really likes, something that has struck an audience in a certain way. It's not really so much about transforming yourself the way actors do onstage. I think there's a difference...
