There are a whole bunch of roles where people say, 'Oh, you're playing yourself.' I guess it's kind of a compliment. Or people say, 'Oh, man, you just roll out of bed and do that.' The work is to make it look effortless. That's the hard part.
It's very, very corrupting to the spirit, doing comedy. And you have to be almost a saint, like Jack Benny was, like Steve Martin is, to avoid the corrupting of it, because there's very little work where the actual work and the reward are simultaneou...
I try to get that across in the work, to try to, if I'm lucky, to make this world a little bit better for all of us before I check out. And that's if I'm lucky, I don't always get to have that privilege but I try always.
When I first tried the American accent, for a moment I thought I could never be an actor because I just could not do it. But then I thought, 'Okay, it'll just be something that I work at until I get it.'
Well you know, Woody doesn't rehearse, as opposed to my own method of directing where I really work with actors around a round table for weeks, examining the values of the material, so his technique is very different.
I got my training here in Chicago at the Goodman School Of Drama, and a lot of my personal work is usually internal work and stuff. Everything else that goes on is icing on the cake - your wardrobe, your makeup, whatever else you have to do.
I learned that you can make a sci-fi film that is satisfying overseas. European people have everything in check. I'd make every sci-fi film in Europe. They only work 14 hours a day. After that, it's overtime.
I had some things I had to fix. It took me 14 years to do it. But it was never really fun back in the day to work with directors who were a lot older and were like authoritarian and talking to you like that.
Dirt used to be a badge of honor. Dirt used to look like work. But we've scrubbed the dirt off the face of work, and consequently we've created this suspicion of anything that's too dirty.
I can say the willingness to get dirty has always defined us as an nation, and it's a hallmark of hard work and a hallmark of fun, and dirt is not the enemy.
So that is how I ended up with those two titles, I like Accidentally on Purpose better - it is how we work in our trade - is it really an accident, or is there a thread of destiny in there? That was the intention, I am not sure I found out.
I try to procrastinate, if I can, productively, like I'll work on something else as procrastination. Or I take a walk. Because often I find, if you get out, more things come to you.
I'd also like to do a play. I've never done theater, and constantly changing and refining a performance is something I'd like to do, even though it may sound like work to some people - and it probably is work.
I was happy she got it and I have to sort of - and one of the reasons I did Third Watch is because I wanted to break that thing of just being the pretty girl and play it down and let it be about the work.
One day, the people who work in my kitchen stir-fried chopped Napa cabbage to serve with some meat or fish for their own dinner. I got to thinking: 'What if the cabbage was the most important thing on the plate?'
As an actor sometimes we sit and wait for projects to be handed to us and we don't really work. We expect our agents and managers to know who we are and to see who we are and offer us a part or send us out and submit us.
You work at a job, and you reach a certain level, and you're a little satisfied, and you keep going at it a little more, and you finally finish it. You go, 'Ah,' all your dopamine receptor sites are full. You're satiated.
When I was a lot younger, I did some work with St. Jude's, but then we went on a 'Red Band' tour across the United States, and we went to a bunch of hospitals and had the privilege of meeting kids who are suffering or going through these different si...
Cats are impossible to work with. They're just very difficult because you can't really train them. They're not really interested in whatever you want them to do. Dogs want to please you; cats only want to please themselves.
The problem is that I work in more than one genre. It's impossible for me to aim for a single one because, for me, comedy is mixed with tragedy. That's very Spanish, the way in which comedy and tragedy are inextricable from each other.
There's something about uninterrupted singing that just doesn't work for me, because at some point, I need my characters to talk. Without meaning to offend anyone, a musical like 'Les Miserables' would be the last thing I'd ever be interested in.
