I had to learn how to bring the best outta Key! by learning what's going on with him. That's how I approach every artist I work with, period.
Even prior to WWE, when I was bartending and training MMA, I always had a sense of fulfillment because although not my dream job, I took pride in being the best bartender I could be.
I was a good bartender. I wouldn't say I was the best bartender in New York, but I could hold my own.
Now, we are still learning how to approach girls, you know, learning what to say, etc., because the practice we've had was with our other girl, the cello. If you noticed, it has the shape of a female.
I think playing a lot every three or four days is the best thing. The best training is the games; there is no training in the week that you can compare the intensity, fatigue, and everything that you have in a match.
I used to feel for years and years and years that I was very remiss not to have written a novel and I would question people who wrote novels and try to find out how they did it and how they had got past page 30. Then, with the approach of old age, I began to just think: “Well, lucky I can do anything at all.
From 1965 to 1974, I served the best possible apprenticeship for an actor. I learned firsthand how a truck driver lives, what a bartender does, how a salesman thinks. I had to make a life inside those jobs, not just pretend.
I remember that, one day, I was visiting one training center in the 1990s that was teaching people how to fix Volkswagen engines from the 1960s, which were no longer sold. So you were training people on a skill that had zero value. The reason is that they hadn't received any new equipment in 20 years.
We have had eight years of consistent and persistent attacks on those four years in government - and on me, personally, but that does not matter - by people who were collectively responsible for those four years.
The fact that I was African American was never addressed, and that allowed me to just be a student, like anyone else. I was not aware of how rare it was to be an African American, how rare it was to have four years of training under my belt, and how, even though I could imitate people and fake it, unprepared I was to become a professional.
I was only 24 years old when I won my first Olympia. To be that young and the world champion was a lot of pressure. When I won the 8th one, I had the record. I was on top: that was the absolute best that I ever looked onstage, the best training and prep that I had done, and I had no regrets. I knew it was time to walk away.
Throughout my years, I've had the pleasure of assembling and training what I believe to be the best group of people in the world. People with the presence of mind to deal with any flare-up, including my own. People who share the belief that nothing is impossible.
I just think the American people had expected that the president of the United States would be able to describe what he's going to do in the next four years. But he can't. He can't even explain what he's done in the last four years.
I had to spend a few years learning how to do movies. I wasn't really good at that. I was a theatre actor first and foremost. So I took my time learning that.
I did stand-up comedy for 18 years. Ten of those years were spent learning, four years were spent refining, and four years were spent in wild success. I was seeking comic originality, and fame fell on me as a byproduct. The course was more plodding than heroic.
I feel lucky. I do love it, mostly. At college I had it in my heart that I wanted to be a writer but I didn't want to tell anyone about it. Then I graduated and became a bartender in Philadelphia, writing during the day. I was the worst bartender in the world.