I tend to play characters that I can infuse with certain kinds of humour. Even the baddest guy can be funny in his own particular way. I want the audience to engage with the character on some deeper level so that they leave the cinema still thinking about him.
I'm a good son, a good father, a good husband - I've been married to the same woman for 30 years. I'm a good friend. I finished college, I have my education, I donate money anonymously. So when people criticize the kind of characters that I play on screen, I go, 'You know, that's part of history.'
I'm a character actor and that's what I do. All the roles that I've had have been mainly support roles, because character actors don't usually get the lead in movies. It rarely happens.
It's always interesting to play characters who are vulnerable and how you display that vulnerability and what it's going to mean to people who watch it.
But Medicine is a demonstrative Science, and all its processes should be proved by established principles, and be based on positive inductions. That the proceedings of Medicine are not of this character, in to be attributed to the manner of its cultivation, and not to the nature of the Science itself.
When I saw the script [of The Man], I saw the character and knew I could do the character. It's a relationship movie, which is also what I love to do. That's what attracts me to projects.
Quentin Tarantino was talking about Ordell a little bit, and I was like, "I'm sure Ordell is one of those people who thought Superfly was the greatest movie ever made." So he cuts his hair and straightens it, but he never has enough money to maintain it perfectly. So it's kind of nappy around the edges, straight and kind of puffed up. That's why he'd always keep it in a ponytail or a braid. We were just having fun and creating a distinctive character.
Hair is very, very distinctive. I started that with that boxing movie I did, The Great White Hype. The director wanted me to look like Don King, and everybody knew who Don King was. But I didn't want to be Don King. I wanted the man to be Rev. Fred Sultan, so I decided to make him look like Julius Caesar. And from that point on, I just decided, I had this great wig-maker, so I just found hairstyles that I felt would be distinctive for every character. Like an adventure.
We both [me and Eugene Levy] come from the same place. Eugene did most of his work in SCTV and ensemble situations. I'd done all this theater work before I got into movies and ensemble situations. We both learned how to develop characters and interact with other people in a unique and economic sort of way.
What I remember from [the first meeting with Samuel L. Jackson] was that he was a friendly, animated kind of guy. His screen image is a hard boiled intimidating kind of character. That's what I remembered thinking, 'Boy, this guy seems like a normal guy.'
