It's not easy being Hugh Jackman, but he wears the attention better than anyone I've ever met. He treats every person he meets the same and finds joy in everything he does. The lesson I've learned is that if you work incredibly hard, and you're nice to everybody, you'll be fine.
Do you know I had the best time on 'Loose Women' and I'm very, very fond of the show still. I know everybody who's on it and it's a great open door to go back if I need to. Everybody on there is lovely and I've got a great relationship with them - the new ones and the old ones. It's been a big part of my life over the years, so it's nice I can nip back. I do miss everybody on it, but we're all on What'sApp, so I know what everybody is up to.
I mean the joy of doing the 'Psych' thing I have to say, is that, you know, I'd met them beforehand, James Roday and Timothy Omundson specifically. I met Dule Hill when I got up there. But they're just, you know, a nice bunch of people.
After Pixar's 2006 merger with the Walt Disney Company, its CEO, Bob Iger, asked me, chief creative officer John Lasseter, and other Pixar senior managers to help him revive Disney Animation Studios. The success of our efforts prompted me to share my thinking on how to build a sustainable creative organization.
I had never met an actress or an actor when I thought that I might like to be one. I had never been around people in show business or from the theater or from movies or anything. And I say that as an encouragement, I don't know some people who want to be doing what I'm doing or be involved in film. You don't have to be from it to get interested and get involved. I certainly wasn't.
I have - and you gotta believe this - hardly ever met anybody in Hollywood who's not nice. There are some people I don't like, but everybody has been very nice.
I'm incredibly grateful for Sophie Barthes, I'll always be incredibly grateful for her being generous enough to believe in what I thought. And it was just lucky that I met the right person.
I would say that what we called the Pixar sensibility goes back even further. It is kind of a CalArts sensibility because so many of the people who are creative instrumental people at Pixar came from that school.
What I learned from comparisons and jealousies is that they point to where you haven't filled your cup or owned your gifts. They point to where you are not yet 100% you. We know that when you are fully engaged in doing what you're doing and your heart and creative spirit are involved, you couldn't care less what anybody else is doing.
Running a business is incredibly hard, especially as a creative person, because you're extricated from the creative very quickly, and that is really hard. Obviously, I have experienced that first hand.
My favorite place in the whole world is Nashville. Because it's my home, it's Music City. It's like, everybody there is so artistic and so creative, and nice! Everybody's really friendly.
In Hollywood, they think drawn animation doesn't work anymore, computers are the way. They forget that the reason computers are the way is that Pixar makes good movies. So everybody tries to copy Pixar. They're relying too much on the technology and not enough on the artists.
I grew up at this incredibly odd intersection in Los Angeles, where it felt like the black 'hood met black elegance met white gentrification met Latin culture met wetlands.
That's the same thing that is making me like George W. Bush. "He was nice. I know he was nice. He didn't know what he was doing but he was nice."
Everybody has an inside scoop, so just be a nice guy. Be a nice person.
Venice seemed incredibly lovely, elvishly lovely--to me like a dream of Old Gondor, or Pelargir of the Numenorean Ships, before the return of the Shadow.