Working in film, if you work with great directors, you learn that after every take you must let go. Sitting with my wife at the Academy Awards, we both let the moment just go.

If I were to play somebody who ran a fish and chip shop, I would not work in a fish and chip shop for three months. Staring at chips is not going to help me in my performance.

I think the cinema you like has more to do with silence, and the theater you like has more to do with language.

One of the greatest things drama can do, at it's best, is to redefine the words we use every day such as love, home, family, loyalty and envy. Tragedy need not be a downer.

Family is family over the internet, over Skype, over the telephone. Love is love. You don't have to actually go through some ritual to prove that you love somebody.

Fifteen years before I became a screen actor, I was in the theatre. A lot of my work was comedy, which I loved doing. It's harder.

With narration, you have to be very accurate with your voice. It's a good exercise to do.

Equal partners aren't always what we envision as being manifestly equal. Equality can come in many different shapes and sizes and combinations.

I do remember, as a child, that I always imagined, when I was maybe 6 or 7, my fantasy was that everywhere I went I was being followed by an invisible film crew.

They're a very strange lot actors, very strange people.

You cannot learn a lesson of profound forgiveness unless you understand what it is to be wounded and forgive that which has wounded you.

...he'd been able to deal with that pain because he'd accepted his own part in causing it

When you are creating something artistically and are speaking to or representing a culture that you know truthfully, you are doing a good job.

The more we are true to ourselves, the more we can connect with and contribute to the world.

I kind of did this thing in high school, a spoof of 'Sweeney Todd' called 'Shirley Todd,' and I had a great time doing that.

I don't need more pain in my life. Why did I invite it in? Do I have to feel pain to believe I feel anything at all?

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

[T]he Famous Rules which the French call, Des Trois Unitez , or, The Three Unities, which ought to be observ'd in every Regular Play; namely, of Time, Place, and Action.

One pays for everything, the trick is not to pay too much of anything for anything.

If God told Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, and Herman Cain to run for president, then God obviously wants Barack Obama to win.

We still have too much air and water pollution and we still need to work to reduce it. But we also need to put the problem of pollution into a historical as well as scientific perspective.