In acting, I always try to go back to what would actually be the real situation, the real human behavior in life.
I stay subjective because that's what I do. That's one of my abilities. I don't need to watch it because I've had the adventure. I don't do low-budget acting. I do the same acting, whether I'm in a Jim Cameron or not. I always try to do good work. There's no snobbery in there
I try and imagine myself in situations and figure out how I'd have reacted and responded to them, and then bring that insight into my acting. Much of acting is about borrowing from your real-life experiences.
There was no one moment when I decided I would spend my life acting. I am not certain that I will. Acting has never been a consistent passion. I have done it since I was young - so I have been acting for 30 years - but intermittently. I always had other jobs, joys, and creative outlets.
The past is already past. Don't try to regain it. The present does not stay. Don't try to touch it from moment to moment. The future has not come. Don't think about it beforehand.
I'm a much better listener when I'm acting than I am as a person in real life because you learn as an actor that listening is so important. You have to really key into what the other person you're acting with is saying and how they're saying it and react in the moment to what is going on.
There's always been a celebration of what is that moment, whoever I am at that moment in my life. [It] is a very real way of looking at beauty.
I hope to make acting my career for the rest of my life, if I can. If acting doesn't work out, I'd love to produce or direct or write. I just want to stay in this business, definitely. That would be my number one thing. I always want to be an actress.
When I started acting, my parents gave me three rules: I had to stay good in school, stay the kid they always knew I was, and I had to have fun. If I wasn't doing those three things, then I couldn't do acting anymore.
A wonderful acting teacher I love, Josh Pais, has a system I love for being in the moment in acting, but also in life. And one of the things he reminds me of is to take a moment and just be here now.
I guess maybe I try to make movies that are closer to real life than are many Hollywood movies. But I still try to stay within a commercial narrative, a contemporary American vernacular.
Always stay true to your nature. Anything that you are being hired for in any aspect of life whether it is a banking job, acting directing, whatever it is you have to stay true to who you are because they hired you to do what you do.
I try to stay real with my thoughts and the things that I go through in life. I like being free.
Forget about realizing shunyata and going on the different bhumis and all this. Just stay in the moment, stay aware, be kind and try to improve your mind.
Don't be thinking that this lama over there is giving better teachings or that this lama over here is giving more secret initiations. Leave that. Just keep the practice very simple, try to stay in the moment and try to stay mindful.
I think that's the thing I learned at 'Saturday Night Live' - any time I would try and strategize, I would always, always fall on my face. Things worked out when I tried to make it about what I was feeling at that moment and what I was into in that moment of my life.