A lot of people describe me as chubby, which seems so easy, so first-choice. Or stocky. Fair-skinned. Tow-headed. There are so many other choices. How about dense? I mean, I'm a thick kind of guy. But I'm never described in attractive ways. I'm waiting for somebody to say I'm at least cute. But nobody has.
I think you ultimately have to love who you're playing. You have to have that kind of feeling. You have to have passion for the person.
For me, acting is torturous, and it's torturous because you know it's a beautiful thing. I was young once, and I said, that's beautiful and I want that. Wanting it is easy, but trying to be great - well, that's absolutely torturous.
Creating anything is hard.
Well, I think everyone struggles with self-love.
I always thought I'd be a New York theater actor, riding my bicycle to rehearsal. That was all I ever wanted.
Success isn't what makes you happy. It really isn't. Success is doing what makes you happy and doing good work and hopefully having a fruitful life. If I've felt like I've done good work, that makes me happy. The success part of it is all gravy.
My favorite thing about acting is being alone and going through the scripts and working on it and getting ideas and asking myself questions, looking outside myself for them and researching and getting to the bottom of something and being creative with it as an actor and how to express it in a creative fashion. That's my favorite part. And, the actual acting of it.
My mum's name is Marilyn O'Connor. She's here tonight and I would like if you see her for you to congratulate her because she brought up four kids alone and she deserves congratulations for that.
To have that concentration to act well is like lugging things up staircases in your brain. I think that’s a thing people don’t understand. It is that exhausting. If you’re doing it well, if you’re concentrating the way you need to, if your will and your concentration and emotional and imagination and emotional life are all in tune, concentrated and working together in that role, that is just like lugging weights upstairs with your head... And I don’t think that should get any easier.
I try to live my life in such a way that I don't have any regrets. That's probably why I work so much. I don't want to feel I missed something important.
I've worked with a lot of characters that are unhinged. I've played characters that are unhinged. That's, like, my job.
My image of Jesus is someone who is exciting...Were he alive today, he would be causing havoc!
Film's hard when you don't have any relationship with the director at all and you just show up. Then you really are just a gun for hire.
I think Magnolia is one of the best films I've ever seen and I can say that straight and out and anybody that disagrees with me I'll fight you to the death. I just think it is one of the greatest films I've ever been in and ever seen.
To act well isn't an easy thing.
There is no pleasure that I haven't actually made myself sick on.
My soul is in good shape.
The strange thing is I never thought I'd do films.
Life is short. Time is short. As we get older, time does quicken. It's long, and it's long pertaining to that thought, that the past is not done with you because you can't rid of it.
When you become a parent, you look at your parents differently. You look at being a child differently. It's an awakening, a revelation that you have.
You know the circus performer who spins the plates in the air you know, and he'll spin six or seven plates in the air? Acting sometimes is kind of that guy spinning all those plates in the air but in your head and in your body.
I feel like I made a little bit of difference.
Why you do something is always kind of a mystery to me.
Being unemployed is not good for an actor. No, it isn't, no matter how unsuccessful you are. Because you always remember getting fired from all the restaurants. You remember that stuff very, very strongly.
