I know how much embarrassment hurts, and I love it as a theme because you can keep digging a hole. It’s just an endless well, embarrassment.
My physique is down to 20 years of eating cheese.
Since there is absolutely no logical reason to assume there is an afterlife, I decided to make the life I have now as much fun as possible.
I am not a wolf in sheep’s clothing, I’m a wolf in wolf’s clothing.
You can just keep getting it worse until you have to pull back and let the audience breathe. But yeah, I really love digging.
The grass isn’t always greener on the other side!
I don’t think humans are meant to be looked at when we’re buying pants.
That’s what being nervous and sort of out of your comfort zone does. It’s the same in “The Office” when a black guy comes to the office and all he thinks is ‘I better show this guy I’m not a racist.’ So what does he do? Only talks about black issues.
I think the best advice I’d say to any actor when you do comedy is play it straight.
I’ve been nominated four times, never won. And the whole world is going, ‘Why hasn’t Winslet won one?’ That’s why I’m doing it. “Schindler’s Bloody List,” “The Pianist,” Oscars coming out of their ass.
That’s what life is, it’s the small struggles. You walk down the street for half an hour, you see half an hour of drama. You don’t need convoluted plot lines. You don’t need long-lost brothers. You don’t need it’s set on the future; it’s set on the moon.
Everyday life is interesting enough, whether it be in an office or being ignored on the set of something supposedly more glamorous.
Our challenge with “The Office” and “Extras” was to get it completely scripted but to find a cast that could make it look like they were saying it for the first time.
When you get back into the editing suite in the cold light of day, the written stuff is better.
A world without any lies at all is not a good world, because it’s artless and because there are no white lies, no flattery.
I think what makes us human is those choices – whether to tell the truth or not.
I still see myself as a bit of a cottage industry. Being in a room creating stuff and seeing if anyone wants it, as opposed to going to work for someone.
You try to make characters you care about, and I think realism helps. Even though this is a high concept, the characters have got to be real.
I can’t find someone funny whom I don’t like. Hitler told great jokes. I didn’t find it funny at all.
I think that’s the fundamental thing – you can go anywhere you like as long as you’re following a character that the audience likes and understands.