My university degree is in art and, yes, I do a lot of drawing for all my books. I have a big drafting table set up in a spare bedroom and I cover it with maps and house plans and sketches that I use in the books. Also, I truly love architecture, so that plays a big part in all my books.
You can write 16 plays and not make as much money as you did doing one movie.
The list of my favorite experiences would almost equal the list of plays I've been in. There are a few exceptions, but out of politeness I'm not going to mention them. If you don't have a few stinkers, you can't appreciate the good ones.
Michael Ralph brilliantly plays the street prophet, a West Indian who foreshadows the Harlem riot.
I love doing voiceover work. I started doing voiceover work when I had just dropped out of school, and the first few professional jobs I got were plays, but then I started making money doing voice-overs.
I'm not saying that what the radio plays isn't good. My issue is with what they don't play. You can play Jay-Z, but why don't you play Jurassic 5? You can play Nas and Nelly, but why don't you play J-Live? I want to open up the door to how it was back in the day.
I took an acting class at Cerritos Junior College and I did a handful of plays, maybe five or six plays.
I was in the school plays, I did a lot of music. I carried on through university for short films and loads of plays.
I'm a big lover of Shakespeare. In fact, the only plays that I've ever done professionally in New York have been Shakespearian.
Joan Cusack is one of my favorite comedic actresses, and every part she plays is so different. She does the wackiest stuff and somehow it works. I like watching her a lot, and I think you can always go further and pull back. That's something I really have to work on.
In my plays I want to look at life - at the commonplace of existence-as if we had just turned a corner and run into it for the first time.
I never noticed my voice. I did become aware as a little kid at camp that I liked doing accents. We'd do plays and skits, and I realized I loved speaking in voices that weren't my own.
Football should never be a worry. It should be exciting. When a child plays football outside, he doesn't need to worry. Professionals should be the same.
I don't like what the radio plays for the most part.
A friend of mine had his own theater company, and he jumped me in like I was in a gang. And once I came in, it was just that simple. For the first time in my life, I felt, 'This is a career, this is a life that I think I can grow old doing.' It was love at first sight. I loved being on stage and reading these plays. It was great.
The cast gets along pretty well, it's a good work environment. I hang out a lot with Brett Claywell, he plays Tim Smith on the show. We play plenty of basketball.
If they ever do my life story, whoever plays me needs lots of hair color and high heels.
I was asked to be on 'The Colbert Report' last year as Big Bird and Oscar. But when we got there, we discovered they wanted both characters on at the same time. Stephen Colbert didn't know one man plays them both. We called Joey Mazzarino, our head writer, who's a very good puppeteer as well. He agreed to zip over and do Oscar.
Your plays are always personal. You can't help seeing yourself in the serial killer you've just written. But they get less specifically personal.
All the jobs I've gotten in the last two years are because directors have seen the work I've done - indie films, plays, short student films, TV - since I moved to the states in 1996. I mean, I have an entire career in Canada that nobody has seen.
You can't go around chasing your own plays and showing up every time somebody does one somewhere. You just cross your fingers and hope that they're OK.
I think more than anything, you should do what you love. If you love classical playwrights, seek out companies or places that are doing that. If you love modern playwrights, try to find groups who are writing new plays or working on new plays. If you love television, watch as much theater and film as you can.
I had done a lot of plays, particularly at my own theater in LA, and it was the first time in my theatrical life where I didn't feel that my role was also to keep everybody else working hard.
The uglier a man's legs are, the better he plays golf - it's almost a law.
I ended up doing four or five plays in college and being an English major with my thesis in language acquisition, which I was planning to study in graduate school.
Laurence Olivier said in an interview once that when he plays a tragedy he always aims for the funny parts, and the other way around. Because in a comedy you look for what's serious. I think that's true. Sometimes things are really funny if you're absolutely earnest. If you're really serious, it's hilarious.
Anyone watching '30 Rock' always knew Tina Fey was playing a fictionalized version of herself, a workaholic comedy writer who also plays one on TV. She's the boss; Liz Lemon just works here.
I can't find anything wrong with Ashton Kutcher. I think he's great. It's odd that in America there's a very mixed reaction to him. I think those that have only seen him on 'Punk'd' or 'That 70s Show' get him wrong. There's much more to him than those characters or that persona he plays in those shows.
To be straight, I was kind of a dork, and in order to fulfill the creative fires burning inside me, I participated vigorously as a Civil War re-enactor through most of my teenage years, traveling across the country to participate in large scale reenactments - grandiose plays enacted by over weight history buffs and war enthusiasts alike.
As a student in London, I had seen so many shows, so many plays and had seen so many greats of the day.
I love bunt plays. I love the idea of the bunt. I love the idea of the sacrifice. Even the word is good. Giving yourself up for the good of the whole.
The kind of theater that I do is sort of 'narrative realism,' which I think in the broadest sense is legitimate to say is mainstream. I mean, in a certain sense, Suzan-Lori's plays have had mainstream levels of success. But Suzan-Lori is in some ways not a narrative realist.
Tim Robbins had real confidence in college. He literally stole actors from the theater department at UCLA to be in his plays. The department heads got so mad at him.
And that's another reason to make this movie: We can put plays on film now, at a relatively small cost, and they will reach an audience they would never have reached otherwise.
I commissioned this artist to make these silver tomahawks by hand. Larry Sellers, who plays Cloud Dancing on the show, blessed and cleansed them and all.
My dad also plays a little banjo and guitar, my mom plays the mandolin.