Many actors are not willing to wait and take the risk. They get restless sitting at home and, eventually, take up anything that comes their way. It's not that I wasn't offered supernatural shows and love stories again, but I chose to wait for the right opportunity. I deserve variety, or I will feel stagnant.
As I began to take risks, leaving my very comfortable and secure job and taking this first leap into fashion, every subsequent risk became easier to take because I began to see the kind of opportunity and excitement that risk-taking offered.
I don't know that I feel comfortable playing a villain; as a matter of fact I probably don't feel comfortable, which is why I like it so much. It's just an opportunity to try something different.
The lack of opportunity is ever the excuse of a weak, vacillating mind. Opportunities! Every life is full of them. Every newspaper article is an opportunity. Every client is an opportunity. Every sermon is an opportunity. Every business transaction is an opportunity, an opportunity to be polite, an opportunity to be manly, an opportunity to be honest, an opportunity to make friends.
I love working with family and friends because, as an actor, it makes my job easy. I feel comfortable with all of these people, and I feel more willing to take risks.
I've worked in the studio with a lot of young girls, and they'll go, 'Oh, the label is telling me to take off my clothes, and I don't feel comfortable.' Well if you don't feel comfortable, don't do it.
Well, it starts with being willing to feel what we are going through. It starts with being willing to have a compassionate relationship with the parts of ourselves that we feel are not worthy of existing on the planet. If we are willing through meditation to be mindful not only of what feels comfortable, but also of what pain feels like, if we even aspire to stay awake and open to what we're feeling, to recognize and acknowledge it as best we can in each moment, then something begins to change.
I can work every day of the year. TV is easy. My call's at 8:30 a.m. I'd like to break out of the comedy thing and take a shot at something serious like theater. The off-season allows me to do movies, but I'm not tired of TV yet. There's nothing like it. I've got the best of both worlds.
For me, it's different every year. Some years, it takes me a while to feel comfortable again, to feel like I'm ready to go. Other years, it clicks real fast. Sometimes, it just takes one game or one swing to feel like, 'OK, I'm back.'
As I get older, I'm more willing to take on more, I guess. I feel more comfortable kind of being different characters and kind of stretching it a little more. Like with The Visitation. At least for me, being an actor, I have to draw from human experiences, so it was kind of a stretch playing that role. Kind of supernatural... kind of like what I did in The Crow actually.
I want to be comfortable on TV. If I'm comfortable, they're comfortable watching me. I think nothing's more icky than watching icky on TV.
It's funny because I feel like growing up in Europe and having these different experiences, I feel like I can talk to anybody. I'm always comfortable in every situation that I go in, and that helps me on the court.
I think I like those who feel comfortable like a friend and also take good care of me like a mother.
Every game and every minute you get to step on the court is an opportunity to feel more comfortable and get better.
Producer Michael Davies - who did 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire' - offered me a TV show, but I turned it down. I wasn't negotiating: It just didn't sound like a good idea. Then he offered me another show, and I said, 'No thanks' again. When I heard about 'Win Ben Stein's Money,' I thought, 'OK, that sounds like a good idea.'
We would like you to reach the place where you're not willing to listen to people criticize one another... where you take no satisfaction from somebody being wrong... where it matters to you so much that you feel good, that you are only willing to think positive things about people... you are only willing to look for positive aspects; you are only willing to look for solutions, and you are not willing to beat the drum of all of the problems of the world.