I do still sit back and wonder when I'm in LA if this is all really true or is it all kid-on. But it's great. I always bear in mind that the right place and time have a huge deal to do with it, and there are hugely talented actors who haven't had tha...
For actors, when you first get the project and you see that it's a Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman-produced project, right away, from an acting standpoint, you go, 'Wow. That'd be great to be part of that. What a career move that'd be.'
It's actually really great to be a student and an actor, because I get to do this job that I love, then just when I think my head might explode, I get to go to school where they don't really care about what magazine cover I'm on.
People are always talking about the old days. They say that the old movies were better, that the old actors were so great. But I don't think so. All I can say about the old days is that they have passed.
I prefer being known for my stand-up because I write it. I love being an actor, and saying other people's words is great. But then, when I do stand-up, I love getting my own point of view out there.
Playing a plainer role means everything is dependent on the credentials of the actor, not the fact that they are as pretty as Julia Roberts. People start to look at their talent rather than their appearance. And playing the ugly part often means less...
While I feel that I have a great reservoir to draw from as an actor for lots of different roles, it is difficult because it can be an industry where it's people's jobs to thin-slice you really quickly and try to fit you into a niche in the market.
I feel like my early experiences of acting, and I think a lot of other actors' too, are probably at camp or school plays where you get to have great range. At camp, I remember getting to play a 50-year-old man.
Human nature is not amenable to prediction based on the trends or tendencies prevailing at the time. It is amenable to startling creativity of the kind practiced by great artists, directors, writers, musicians, actors, who know how to touch a chord i...
There are some great actors I don't want to meet because I don't want to know how they did it. I don't want to know anything about their personal life, and the illusion, or whatever it is, the shape-shiftery magic stuff that they do, which is my joy.
To be a great actor, you really don't need to go to acting school or learn dance classes or work on your body. You have to be intelligent. You have to draw on a lot of emotions that you go through in life that you can tap into once you work on a set.
What I always wanted to get seen as was as a good actor, when it was the acting I was doing. When I'm writing, I want to try to be seen as a good writer. Not as somebody with a particular idea to sell, or something like that.
It makes me feel good that I can now sit there and go, I've worked with Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, all the great actors that I've worked with... Sir Ben Kingsley.
I think I probably think about myself as an actor, which is the way most people do. I think I'm good, I don't think I'm great. I think I would hire somebody else to play me in the movie about me.
After all these years, I'm starting to learn what a good director does, and I know what a good one does with actors: help us navigate finer instincts, help us when we're wrong, encourage us when things are great.
I want to try and do as much as I can as an actor. So far I think I've done pretty well with being a minister's son. And now I know I'm pretty darn good at playing a woman too.
I'm what you call a good, old-fashioned working actor who has had delusions of grandeur for my entire career and has known what I want to do, but there's a lot going on out there. There are a lot fewer films being made, and there's a lot of competiti...
For example I don't work with William Hurt the same way that I will work with Viggo. They're different guys and they work in different ways. So a good sensitive director has his general style and technique and personality that he uses but you don't i...
I have, I think to do a play a year is very good if you can afford the time and the energy because it's difficult to do, it's really the actors medium of course, because you're really out there and nobody's yelling cut so, yeah I have.
When you first start out as an actor, you're just looking for a good part. As time goes on, if you're being held responsible for the movies themselves, you're looking for a good script all around.
You go through stages in your career that you feel very good about yourself. Then you feel awful, like, 'Why didn't I choose something else?' But overall I'm pretty satisfied that I made the right choice when I decided to be an actor.