As an actor, I don’t have any politics. As an actor, I’m driven more by an authentic – I would say an obsessive-compulsive-disorder level-fixation on mimicry, tonality of voice, to literally imitate something until I can just disappear into it.
I grow tired of intelligence having such a limited manifestation in movies – “intelligence” usually meaning coastal, with a certain level of formal education.
When I think about directing a film, the thing that stops me short is wondering if I’m a natural at it the way I think you, and PTA, and Fincher are born directors. Maybe some people’s talent is in understanding the ways that film communicates, without dialogue, without plot.
I just don’t think most of us are aware how much of what we throw away ends up in the ocean, for starters. Plastic bags are among the worst. The US is actually falling behind the curve on that score. China and many other countries have already banned the production and use of thin plastic bags.
The deeper you go with the character, the more you see the layers start to peel away. It’s more challenging to me, but it’s also just interesting. Those are the things I like to watch. I like to watch the evolutions of something.
Obviously plastics have served very important purposes and been incredibly convenient but as we begin to witness the long-term consequences of the chemical components leaching into our water and our bodies, we’re going to be forced to look for alternatives to how we package goods and food.
I’ve already spent a lot of my life doing what makes me go. There’s a life out there while I’m still young, able to move, able to just sit at peace in the water – I should be spending much more time doing that, rather than continuing to go through this artistic struggle.
When I’m looking for Zen and I’m not saying this facetiously at all – I would really rather surf, scuba dive, or fly my plane. And, when I feel tension about the grind of work, it’s not getting the money to make films versus making films that constitutes the grind, it’s all this stuff.
Sometimes their oppression of emotion and the weird way it comes out is more interesting than painting it in bold primary colors.
I never even considered comedy genre as something to embrace or move away from.
I wish I were more musically gifted, more intuitive in playing instruments.
I don’t think you should sit around and wait for people to give you an opportunity to express yourself or do your work, or whatever. Actors have to be producers and writers have to be producers.
If two people are at completely different stages in their spiritual life, that can present a real problem.
Most of what I know about environmental conservation I learned from my father, who has been a leader within the movement for over 30 years.
I think that the environmental movement is wisely moving away from a largely emotion-based argument for the spiritual or intrinsic value of Nature with a capital “N” and evolving toward a very hard-nosed case for the economic value of natural capital, ecosystem services, biodiversity, etc.
To cite my own alma mater, it’s shocking to me that Yale University can teach what it teaches at the Yale School of Environmental Studies and utterly fail to mirror those values in any way in its investment practices.
What has always been most interesting about acting to me personally is that it affords you the chance to shift gears, both in terms of the experiences you get to have through doing it, but also the different kinds of things you get to represent.
I do subscribe to the maxim that generally comedy is like jazz. Either you get it or you don’t. You can’t learn it and you can’t be taught it. I don’t think that if you are not a funny person, you can fake it.
When a butterfly flutters its wings in one part of the world, it can eventually cause a hurricane in another.
Mathematicians seem to have no difficulty in creating new concepts faster than the old ones become well understood.
We must wholeheartedly believe in free will. If free will is a reality, we shall have made the correct choice. If it is not, we shall still not have made an incorrect choice, becauee we shall not have made any choice at all, not having a free will to do so.