I don't feel like a hero - just another person involved in the space business. I'm hoping to encourage young folks to become explorers.
When I was doing Bond, I was always being sent scripts to play the derring-do hero, with explosions going on all around.
When Shakespeare begins his exposition thus he generally at first makes people talk about the hero, but keeps the hero himself for some time out of sight, so that we await his entrance with curiosity, and sometimes with anxiety.
The one thing that TV is bad at doing is preaching. There are two extremes, you either turn the people into a punchline or turn them into hero, and both of those things suck, because most people are neither in real life.
Films with female protagonists don't attract many eyeballs. Most of them are perceived as feminist films. If Bollywood starts giving women major roles in entertaining movies, then the audience, too, will open up to the idea of watching commercial films in which the actresses do more than just play the role of the hero's love interest.
I was brought up, as a lot of kids are, on 'Aesop's Fables,' 'Brothers Grimm,' 'La Fontaine,' all those sorts of things. Hans Christian Andersen is a hero of mine.
The Moon! Mars! Asteroids! Rockets! Helium 3! Space solar power! Space tourism! We go through fads, swarm around the hero de jour, and spend far too much time trashing the other guy's ideas in favor of our own.
I think Bond the character is distinct: He's British, he has a certain code that he lives by, he's incorruptible... he's a classical hero, but he's also fallible. He has inner demons, inner conflicts, and he's a romantic.
Popular Monster' is the voice inside my head, hoping you will listen. It's the story of a hero that's been falsely accused and torn down by society. It shows what happens when you get pushed too far.
As a kid, you just like anything fanciful that you're into, but as an adult, I really love that kind of place where the super hero mythos meets life, where it has that human story; that's what I think I was really drawn to when I started getting into the X-Men.
In a traditional TV show or movie, your hero is always where the action is. But in real life, at the end of the movie 'Fargo,' when Bill Macy is arrested, Marge is nowhere to be found because it's a different jurisdiction, and she wouldn't be there. I took that to heart.
My favorite book is anything by Kurt Vonnegut - he's my literary hero. I got to meet him several times, which was a great thrill for me. I don't really remember what we talked about.
In feature films, I used to be the hero's friend, a regular character. In short films, I played the hero; I got roles where I could work on my character and performance. They made me aware of myself as an actor.
My hero is Roger Federer.
Jay-Z is a hero, Sam Walton is a hero - these are not exactly communitarian champions. These are - in some cases, literally; in others, just figuratively - gangster heroes. That's who is worshipped: people who get away with it.
Joss Whedon is a hero of mine, and what he's done for women in film and television, particularly when it comes to writing female roles that would typically go to a man, is awesome.
Petraeus is the finest general I have ever worked for; Holly Petraeus is a great American hero.
Scorsese's been a hero of mine since I was young. If you saw 'Swingers,' you know I was definitely fixated on his body of work.
When I was very young, most of my childhood heroes wore capes, flew through the air, or picked up buildings with one arm. They were spectacular and got a lot of attention. But as I grew, my heroes changed, so that now I can honestly say that anyone who does anything to help a child is a hero to me.
When you're not playing the hero of the story, then you have to know that you're always a foil for the good guy. I love playing that. I think that's always an interesting place to be.