Part of an actor’s job is to draw up a back story.
My dear friend Aaron Paul, I love you so much.
I think it’s not a question of why, more a question of why not.
I appreciate my role as an actor much more after I direct because it’s just easier.
I think, and I mean this sincerely, I was raised humbly. We were a lower middle income family and a household that was scrimping by at times. We were watching the dollar, stretching the dollar, and coupons. It was all those things.
There’s so many things that can go wrong in the execution of a project like a television show or a movie, so many little elements, any number of things, all the way to marketing – like they could market it poorly and nobody finds it and down it goes.
I think if you believe in past lives, I must have been an extremely deprived being. I must have been mistreated, beaten, and forced into indentured servitude because this life has just been phenomenal.
Hollywood has known this for quite a while: Cable is the place to go because they truly have a supportive network and they want to do things that cannot be seen on broadcast. That stimulates the writer-producer. Cable is king.
To me, character in a person is judged by the decisions that are made under pressure.
The best teacher is experience. Find the educational in every situation.
But the only way to get lucky is to be prepared for luck to find you.
Console the failure, but nurture the hunger.
At that precise moment I conjured a credo that would guide me for the rest of my life: I will pursue something that I love – and hopefully become good at it, instead of pursuing something that I’m good at – but don’t love.
If people don’t enhance your life, you have to get rid of them.
That’s the life. That’s why talent alone doesn’t cut it. If you want to be a successful actor, mental toughness is essential. Lay your whole self-worth on getting the role, on the illusion of validation, before long you’re left angry, resentful, and jealous. You’re doomed.
The greatest thing about youth is that you’re not yet battle-weary, so you’ll try anything.
In real life, as it is in fiction, character is both formed and revealed when we are tested. When we are forced to make decisions under pressure, that test can either make us stronger or it can highlight our weaknesses and crack us into pieces.
Love art in yourself, not yourself in art.
I learned that you could so fully inhabit a character that you could fool others, move others. With talent and commitment, you could seduce or terrify. You could make someone feel utter hate or desolation or compassion or even love.
Because we had known the good times, I think my brother and I felt the loss more acutely. My father’s waning presence, his chronic absence, his disappearance. Now he was just a memory.
That’s a nice quality in a person: making someone else feel valued – even if that someone is currently on the bottom rung. I made a mental note.