When you’re a performer, of course you want an audience, but it’s very, very different from courting fame.
You can’t really watch a theater performance by yourself. You can watch a movie by yourself, though.
I think good theaters are really important. They allow you to exist in a space with other people.
When you fall in love with someone, you’re not really changing at all. You’re really just reliving something that already happened at some point.
You can only desire something that you’ve already had in your life.
That’s why so many people want to play Hamlet: because it’s a completely demarked role, and the actor playing it has to be prepared, through the language, to allow the audience to see into who he is.
Theater is all about foyers and conversation and digesting what you’ve seen.
I think the downside of the Internet is that speaking-or writing-has become the point in and of itself.
It seems like people increasingly just can’t be by themselves because they’re so used to having an epicenter on the Internet that actually exists for other people. Until someone clicks onto your Facebook page, it doesn’t mean anything.
If I’m not good at acting, I’m not good at anything else.
It’s interesting when you get those roles, which seem like nothing on the page, and you kind of subvert them. It’s hard to say no.
When I was younger, I was actually looking forward to getting older, to have more insight, more understanding.
A film is not a documentary. And what’s wonderful about film is that it’s a real provocation for people. I never, ever see film as being an absolute version of the truth.
What you’re trying to do as an actor is somehow trick yourself into believing that these words have never been said, and so you’ve got to discover them for the first time.
Theater is a space where you cross over from everyday life, because there are real people in that moment moving in front of you-you’re being invited to believe in a story and cross that bridge.
If you over plan New Year’s Eve it’s going to be a disaster so you have to be alive to changes.
One of my favorite moments is onstage, when you see a dancer leap, and you think they’re flying, and then they fall. It’s that moment of suspension that you look for, and sometimes you get it and sometimes you don’t.
I’m the age I am, but my skin is in pretty good condition because I’ve been consistent with my skincare.
If you know why someone is doing what they’re doing, why they’re behaving the way they are, then that’s your job to reveal that, and often that’s situational. The storytelling does that, and then some of it’s your job as an actor to make that subtext come to life.
You know you’re a pessimist when you win an Oscar and think, “Oh God, I’ve peaked.
The world’s changed. It’s very difficult to know where to be. Because sometimes life is so fast and so absolute that the only way you can change things is by actually shifting your life utterly and totally to a different hemisphere. You can’t partially change. There’s no semi-revolution.