A Quote by Denis Leary

My wife and I were poor when I started but we struggled along until things happened for me in my thirties. I knew I was doing what I loved even if I wasn't getting paid for it, so I think I'd still be doing it.
Black people didn't start coming to see me until 1982. I'd just started doing Delbert, and suddenly my world changed. I started doing black-centred characters that were about people I knew in the community.
I loved doing 'Pennies from Heaven.' Because you have to understand that I'd been doing comedy for 15 to 20 years, and suddenly along came the opportunity to do this beautiful film. It was so emotional to me. I loved it. I don't think it was a good career move, but I have no regrets about doing it.
When I started acting, doing theater stuff at a young age, I was always the comic relief-type roles, so I knew I had a funny bone and could make groups of people laugh, but I didn't really take it seriously until I started getting paid on a weekly basis; then I was like, 'Oh, well, this could be a lifestyle.'
What interested me the most was that when I [traveled to Europe] I knew what Joseph Beuys was doing, he knew what I was doing, and we both, we just started to talk. How did I know what Daniel Buren was doing, and to an extent, he knew exactly what I was doing? How did everybody know? It's an interesting thing. I'm still fascinated by it because, why is it now, with the Internet and everything else, you get whole groups of artists who have chosen to be regional? They really are only with the people they went to school with.
I did a lot of things that I regretted and I certainly paid for my mistakes. You have to go and ask for forgiveness and it wasn't until I really started doing good and doing right, by other people as well as myself, that I really started to feel that guilt go away. So I don't have a problem going to sleep at night.
I did tons of theater in school, and then when I was 16 and got my driver's license, I started driving to Los Angeles, along with my friend Eric Stoltz, who was a year ahead of me and was doing the same thing. So we had the same manager, and we started auditioning for things and doing commercials when we were 16.
One of the great things about being a grandparent is you get to redo what you didn't or couldn't do as a parent. Oftentimes we forget that even while the parent is parenting, they're still a growing person. They're still trying to fix themselves. They're still out there not doing everything a hundred percent correctly. I had the best parents I could ever have, but the kinds of things that they were capable of doing, the things that they said and did, were very destructive to my sister, brother, and me. But they're so much more than those things.
I think when I was getting into directing, or wanting to be a director, when I was a teenager, the two films that really inspired me were Raising Arizona and Evil Dead II. And in the case of the former, I thought, "Wow. Why don't all comedies look like this?" And then as I started doing comedy, particularly when I started doing it on TV...
I started doing yoga in my 20s. I did teacher training, that was what I was going to do if acting didn't work out. I started teaching other actors right at the beginning of the yoga craze - people still thought it was a little weird, but a lot of actors I knew were getting into it and didn't want to look foolish in class. So I started teaching them!
By your thirties, you should be doing whatever it is you're supposed to be doing with your life and just get on with it - which is what I suppose happened with me as much as to anyone else.
I think there's no question that historians create; they would tell you that, I think. If I'm trying to imagine an imperial Roman position, it's much easier to imagine the poor schlub who's not even sure why he's doing what he's doing than it is to imagine Caesar. At least for me. And I'm intrigued, too, by the position of the poor schlub who *still* finds himself supporting the imperial project.
I knew that I was not doing anything wrong, and I knew in my mind I was doing the right thing. I knew that the people who were going against me were not going against me for a good purpose. I knew that they were trying to justify their corruption and misgovernance.
I couldn't watch 'BP' for a long time, until I started doing this job, because I knew in my heart that 'Blue Planet,' as beautiful as it was, at the end they would always have the human impact, and I struggled to watch it because I felt so powerless.
I wasn't that academic, but I always made sure I was earning money. I never wanted to put all my eggs in one basket. Even when I started doing music, my parents were like, 'You need to work; you can't just live off music.' I always knew that. So I worked until I knew I was going to be financially okay.
I don't even know if I ever knew - some sweatshop in Baltimore. I knew with my other relatives - some of the women were in the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and men were shop boys and things like that. I happened to be in Philadelphia, but the family was in New York. I could see what the union was doing for them.It really saved their lives.
I find myself getting associated with a lot of younger people in the game. I still enjoy playing with them, and I think they still enjoy playing with me. As long as I can stay competitive and have fun doing what I'm doing, I guess I'll keep doing it.
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