“In the courtroom, it’s where a lawyer really becomes an actor. There’s a very fine line between delivering a monologue in a play and delivering a monologue to a jury. I’ve always felt that way – I’ve been in a lot of courtrooms. The best lawyers are really theatrical.”
“I try to apply the organic concept to my clothes and bedding as well. There’s nothing like swimming in organic cotton sheets.”
“When I was younger, I wanted to be a cop. Then I watched ‘The Wild Wild West,’ and so I wanted to be in the Secret Service like James West. At some point I realized, ‘That guy is not in the Secret Service. He’s an actor.’ That sounds like a good idea too.”
“A grownup is a child with layers on.”
“When I’m in New York, I bike everywhere. I have a couple of bikes stored over at Ed Norton’s. It’s the only way to go. But in Hawaii, I drive. I have a little Volkswagen Bug, from the ‘Drive it? Hug it?’ phase. I run it on biodiesel.”
“I think my best skill in this whole deal is as a conduit to try to bring people together, because I think it’s in our unity that we’ll have the greatest strength.”
“On ‘The Messenger,’ just imagining playing the part of a soldier in that movie was kind of hard for me. And in ‘Rampart,’ the idea of playing a cop was even harder. It was hard to imagine myself as a cop.”
“The history taught in our schools is scandalous. We grew up believing that Columbus actually discovered America. We still celebrate Columbus Day. Columbus was after one thing only – gold.”
“If I’m in Maui, I play soccer and tennis and go kite-surfing. I prefer doing a sport as opposed to going to a gym. I’m not big on gyms. When I did ‘Rampart,’ I lost 30 pounds because I felt it was better for the character. I worked out constantly, maybe twice a day, and minimized caloric intake.”
“I wish I’d done ‘Dumb and Dumber.’ I was offered the part, but I don’t think I’d have been better than Jeff Daniels was. Another film I wish I’d done was ‘Jerry Maguire.’”
“Pesticides came about after the first world war. Some brainy petrochemical money maker said, ‘Hey, that mustard gas worked great on people, maybe we could dilute it down and spray it on our crops to deal with pests.’”
“I used to have Bible studies at my house. I was in the choir. I was mischievous but also a real mama’s boy. It was a pretty happy childhood.”
“The government may change faces from time to time, but it’s not like we fight wars for democracy – we fight wars for capitalism and for oil.”
“It’s an odd beast, fame. It’s got multiple personalities.”
“Right now there should be a moratorium on the cutting down of old growth in this country. That is a small thing to ask at this point. There is only four percent of old growth left. Ninety-six percent of it has been cut down.”
“I think I’ve been an incredible example to my kids of what not to do.”
“I never was disillusioned with acting because I love acting.”
“To the men in Washington, the world is just a giant Monopoly board.”
“I had a hard time with that hockey. I hadn’t grown up skating, so that was my biggest challenge. We worked on it and worked on it. But then when we first shot it, it was so hard for me.”
“With ‘Hunger Games,’ it’s about people rising up to fight against a corrupt government that controls them.”
“I think, on a personal level, everybody, when you go through the checkout line after you get your groceries and they say, ‘Paper or plastic?’ We should be saying, ‘Neither one.’ We should have our own cloth bags.”
“Some people make a great film and then they can’t follow up.”
“To me, I think it’s this thing of everyone wanting to make Jesus the Son of God and Jesus the only way to God that is the thing that no longer makes me want to be a Christian.”
“The state of the health of the individual is equivalent to the state to the health of the colon.”
“I wrapped a movie called ‘Zombieland,’ in which I was constantly under assault by zombies, then flew to New York, still very much in character. With my daughter at the airport I was startled by a paparazzo, who I quite understandably mistook for a zombie.”
“Violence was almost an aphrodisiac for me.”
“I’m one of those actors who is going to come in with 2,500 ideas. You can shoot down 2,499, but one of them you’re going to like.”
“And Garrison Keillor I think is a fascinating guy and really entertaining.”
“Even though there’s an entertainment value to the film, I think it’s very important because you can’t really separate the impact of that political message from it. It’s rare that you get films like that I think; that really have an important message and are also entertaining.”
“We don’t get the greatest tools to deal with anger. It’s like, ‘Hey, count to 10.’ When someone really upsets me, how do I respond? I don’t usually start counting to 10 and breathing deeply.”
“You have to focus on what you’re passionate about. For me it’s the forests and of course, because I’m concerned about the forests, I’m concerned about the way paper is made.”
“The war against terrorism is terrorism.”
“We’ve killed a million Iraqis since the start of the Gulf war – mostly by blocking humanitarian aid.”
“But I just felt at one point that I was on a hamster wheel, you know? Just doing movie after movie and thinking so much about career related things and I think missing out on hanging with my friends and family as much I needed to.”
“I related to his disillusionment. Thinking that he was going for this big dream. Then he kind of saw through it all at one point and went back home. Then he started a bender, which I can relate to of course.”
“Salma is just one of the great goddesses ever put on this Earth.”
“So I just took some time off. I was maybe going to do two or three years and it turned into five years. But certainly, I’d say it was the best thing I ever did. And now I come back to this whole thing really energized about it.”
“There’s just something extraordinary about that Selma Hayek.”
“Well for six years during Cheers I couldn’t get another job.”
“When I was in the seventh grade I did a report about the environment and the loss of species. It was supposed to be only a few pages, but ended up being nearly 50.”
“My main hope for myself is to be where I am.”
“I don’t believe in politics. I’m an anarchist, I guess you could say. I think people could be just fine looking after themselves.”
“Through my work with PETA, I have learned a great deal about chimpanzee behavior and the plight of chimpanzees imprisoned in laboratories.”
“I love England, the people, the parks, the theatre.”
“The giant industries that are polluting our planet as well as violating human rights worldwide are the ones nearest and dearest to the hearts of American politicians.”
“If you manage to stop the timber industry from cutting this forest, they’ll cut that forest. If you stop oil drilling here, they’ll go drill there.”
“I used to have terrible acne on my face: red, splotchy discoloration. And mucus – I was constantly blowing my nose. Then one day, this woman sits down next to me on a bus, and says, ‘You’re lactose-intolerant.’ It all cleared up in three days. That changed my life. Doctors couldn’t figure it out.”
“When I had just started ‘Cheers,’ my nerves were ajangle, to put it mildly. I was absolutely terrified. What you’re learning is to not show the fear, and to ultimately overcome it so that the level of relaxation is commensurate with the level of tension.”
“’Natural Born Killers’ is really a misunderstood romantic comedy.”
“I remember my daughter Deni coming along, and she was so pure and caring of everybody and everything. And somehow, this little being managed to get around all the obstacles – the gun turrets, the walls, the moats, the sentries – that were wrapped around my heart. My heart at that time needed her.”
“You know, I was on ‘Cheers’ for eight years, and I couldn’t get another job, and I thought, ‘I’m going to be Woody Boyd forever.’ Which is not bad, but I really thought I was capable of more.”
“I’ve been in so many good movies that I felt like nobody saw; it’s a pretty dreadful feeling.”
“I went to a Presbyterian college, you know, I was in… all the way, and so I remember doing my first sermon when I was 17, I was in high school. It wasn’t a full twenty-five minute sermon, but for like ten minutes I got up and they let me do that, and it was on faith.”
“I have a strong spiritual life. I can’t say that I have faith that Jesus is my Savior, but I look at Jesus in the same way that I look at, you know, Mohammed. He was giving everyone the goods. So was Gandhi.”
“Everything I do, I try to think, ‘Okay, what are the ramifications?’ Like, with the clothes I wear, I prefer if it’s grown organically, because cotton – which is what’s used in most clothing – takes up 50 percent of all pesticide use.”
“I was a freshman in college in 1980, the year that Reagan was elected, and I went around badgering people to vote for him.”
“You can do a movie and hope it may be great, but until you have seen it, you don’t know. I loved ‘Rampart.’ I love that one called ‘The Hi-Low Country’ that Steven Frears shot.”
“I remember my first run-in with cops. It took me really getting to hang, well after that, with cops who were cool, and realizing, ‘Okay, there are some bad ones.’ I ran into some bad ones in Columbus, Ohio, but they’re not all bad.”
“With ‘Rampart,’ I read it and I’m like, ‘That’s the best role I’ve ever been offered. Phenomenal.’ But, I was daunted, you know? Like the concept of trying to be a cop. It’s just bizarre, man. Bizarre to even think about.”
“It’s really been a long-term dream of mine to have an alternative to wood-based paper. Over half of the trees cut in the world are cut for paper products.”
“Two boxes of Step Forward Paper saves one tree – that’s a real stat.”
“I used to eat burgers and steak, and I would just be knocked out afterward; I had to give it up.”
“I’m not a Twinkie lover. I don’t do sugar or dairy either.”
“I’m an anarchist and I do think things such as Occupy Wall Street are about getting a little closer to the solution.”
“Sometimes I feel people think I live on a commune but I don’t. We are all solar, though. There are no power lines. It’s mostly farmers, so everyone who has tractors uses bio-diesel.”
“I try not to spend too much time with regret, although I wish I’d had more hang time with my dad.”
“Economically, many folks don’t feel they can afford organic. While this may be true in some cases, I think more often than not it’s a question of priority. I feel it’s one of the most important areas of concern ecologically, because the petrochemical giants – DuPont, Monsanto – make huge money by poisoning us.”
“I do sometimes lecture people about what they’re eating, but that’s only if they ask me.”
Leave a Reply