For hundreds of years, that was the major form of entertainment: The grown-ups sat around and watched the kids play. Now they sit around and watch the television. The actors are the kids.
I enjoy comedy and I hope that people enjoy watching me do it.
My favorite parts of work as an actor and a director are those unplanned mistakes that do happen, because it’s like catching lightning in a bottle. It’s the best part of what we do.
I mean, you always want everybody to pat you on the back and tell you you’re wonderful every time you do something; I think that’s human nature.
At one time there were voiceover artists, now there are celebrity voiceover artists. It’s unfortunate because these people need the money less than the voiceover artist.
If you’re smart, you’ll always be humble. You can learn all you want, but there’ll always be somebody who’s never read a book who’ll know twice what you know.
I don’t want to know what happens in any movie that I go to see.
I’ll instinctively know that I identify with a character.
I’m always trying to perfect the romantic comedy, though.
Part of being an actor is letting things come about organically as opposed to forcing them.
If you have Darwin, Christ and Nietzsche, they’re all going to talk at once. You need somebody who listens.
People think celebrities don’t have to worry about human things like sickness and death and rent. It’s like you’ve traveled to this Land of Celebrity, this other country. They want you to tell about what you saw.
A lot of times passion projects or films are difficult to make because they don’t have proven directors attached to them.
Approaching a part or thinking about taking a part, I never think, ‘Is that person like me?’
I don’t mind close-ups, I like them, but they’re kind of forceful – you see a lot, you get a lot of information in a close-up. There’s less mystery.
When I grew up, I was in Manhattan the whole time. But my kids have been all over the world.
It’s hard to find scripts that know what they are from page one to page 115.
It’s always like you write a poem when you can’t really say what you’re trying to say.
Whenever somebody says they need an angle for their story I always fear that they’ve got an idea and they want me to fit into it or they want me to come up with an idea myself or I’m supposed to be more revealing than I’ve been, and to me it just sounds like something I don’t want to do.
In high school and college, I was an athlete.
I’m very proud of my Scottish blood.