In every character I play, I try to imbibe something. Every film is a learning process for me.

I got heavily into the drum-and-bass scene, which is really wicked.

The loneliness is when you pick up and move, even if you are not originally from that place, and you have some memories that you want to embrace. Having a life in transit, I feel like you are always looking out the back window.

All India radio was worldwide.

There's got to be something greater than us.

You have to work with what you are given, even in Shakespeare. we have our form and it is important that we free ourselves through it.

America makes up its own mind about what it wants to see.

It is important to keep your head up and follow what you believe is right.

In every character I play, I try to imbibe something. Every film is a learning process for me.

I love films for the fact that it is like working under a microscope. It is sort of like a laboratory.

The camera is interested in what you are thinking as opposed to just what you are doing or saying.

I like the theatre because you paint with broad strokes. To me the theatre is stretching its definition really far.

I applied to American Repertory School up at Harvard at got in.

I had been working early in my life in films - since I was 11.

I think that I have sold out sometimes.

It is important to tell good stories. You can tell stories even if they are not huge, epic, and wonderful. You can still take the responsibility for being a scribe of your tribe.

We make a contract within ourselves as actors or directors or writers about how much of ourselves we let into projects. You can actually figure out before you work on something how much blood you will have to let emotionally.

Acting school was summer camp, and I needed concentration camp. I had so many different ideas swirling between culture and how to tie things together.

I knew I was happy when I was dancing.

My family was very supportive of my acting. They didn't really have a choice because I got jobs acting before anyone could really say anything. It paid my way through college and helped my family out.

Part of the work is determining through what instrument you are playing. Actors are physical, olympian storytellers and we should be able to create entire landscapes with nothing.

I want to present interesting stories that don't qualify themselves just by virtue of their ethnographic type.

The turntable is now an instrument at the Smithsonian.

I think that rap is narrative, when it's done right.

There is extraordinary similarities between the Midwest in America and Europe in that there is this sense of vast, open sky and loneliness and cold.

I hear music as narrative.

Rap is rhythm and poetry. Hip-hop is storytelling and poetry as well.

It is important to make your own stuff. Even if you are not an actor, it is important to not stop involving yourself as a creative person.

When you get to play with the big boys, your game improves drastically.

My first acting job happened by accident when I was really young. I was in fifth grade and my teacher saw an ad in the paper and took me to the audition after school and I got the part.

Rap is rhythm and poetry. Hip hop is storytelling and poetry as well.

It is important to keep you head up and follow what you believe is right.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

I do like to embed a fictional character firmly in an occupation.

But even with a character like Cary who is relatively outlandish, at the end of the movie he's in a place where I wouldn't have expected him to be - taking on the responsibility of a woman who is pregnant and who used to be his best friend's wife.

Always, your work is the same: You have to tell a story, you have to make a character. It doesn't matter if there are thousands of dollars, millions behind it, or if there is nothing.

Each of us is meant to have a character all our own, to be what no other can exactly be, and do what no other can exactly do.

I liked Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, and that is the kind of character that I would like to have played. That would have been more in tune with who I really was.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

In a lot of ways, the make-up was the character.

The more we study the Indian's character the more we appreciate the marked distinction between the civilized being and the real savage.

So many people have said that to me, that what they really like about Alex is what she brings out in Marissa, and what this situation brings out in her, a hint of happiness and another side to her character.

I've been on the show for six years and I don't even know what her history is. I sort of make things up in my mind, but I think it's hard for an audience to follow and invest in a character when they don't have the details.

It is not true that drink changes a man's character. It may reveal it more clearly.

Because I killed a guy in real life, and because my character kills a guy onstage, they said I could never do anything this great again. I resented that.

Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain - there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up - and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It's a complete experience.

I just kind of understood it, and I threw my love for others and love for life into the character, and was having a blast. I loved playing Dharma. I loved it!

I think if you play a character that is fearless, then it's boring. I think that's what was so incredible about Harrison Ford, is that he always seemed like he was never going to survive it, he's always scared, and yet he always does survive it somehow.

If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself - your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers.