If I put down my tweeter machine for a minute, I actually can communicate with people. As an aside, astonishingly, I just started doing Twitter.
When I use weed creatively, I’m much better at drawing or making something or playing music. But what I do for a living is mostly performing as an actor or writing, and for those things I need to have my faculties sharp.
I won’t read a new graphic comic novel until the writer has completed the entire series. I got burned a few times when I got turned on to a book, plowed through it only to find out the author was in the middle of writing the next.
I always call performing live “giving the people the medicine,” because when you’re engaged in it, you can feel the sort of soul magic being exchanged between the performer and the audience.
If you always have something in your life that you’re trying to improve upon, then every day you have a reason to get out of bed, and you have a reason to achieve something and feel good.
I think that laziness in many ways is the human condition, and that’s what has led us to this place where, as we’ve developed technology.
Let’s just say I can never be cast again after Ron Swanson. Then I have a life of theater and woodworking and my wife to look forward to, and that doesn’t make me anything but very happy.
The fact that I have a job that people even watch is an incredible gift.
My education began in theater school, and it continues to this day. I just continued learning to be a better performer.
When I first met with agents, they said, “Okay, you’re going to play plumbers and mechanics and bus drivers and farmers. Go.”
I come from the theater, where I got into acting because I love transforming. I love nothing more than to be unrecognizable.
A lot of people find themselves in the entertainment business – or perhaps society steers them toward it – because they’re beautiful.
When we think of an actor, we think of a tanned, frosted-tipped, model-looking guy. We don’t think of a plumber.
It’s hard to swallow when people say, “Oh my God, you’re a master of something.” I say, “No, I’m actually a student of that. I could turn you on to websites for 25 masters, and you’ll quickly see that I am their disciple.”
I learned in my early years in the theater that I would never become the guy on top. I’ll never create a show; I don’t have a brain expansive enough to see the whole picture, in a way that would behoove anyone.
I think what makes so many other actors miserable is focusing completely on making other plans. They’re obsessed with their haircut and their headshot and their agent, their IMDB profile or whatever.
I don’t get nominated, and I have to say, I’ve probably gotten the greatest mass of press in my life through not getting nominated. It’s definitely been a winning situation as far as I’m concerned.
I never went too long without a job. The problem was a lot of the early jobs are almost more demoralizing than unemployment.
One of the most poignant pieces of recent science fiction for me was the portrayal of the adults in the Pixar film WALL-E. I feel like we’re on the cusp of becoming fat babies in floating chairs being fed everything in shake form, and I feel like I am as prone to laziness as anybody.
If I had to pick one form of acting, it would be live theater. That’s where I started; that’s where I became a man, I think I’m still finishing up that job.