They gave me the chaps and hat and everything. I looked like a real cowboy. I walked around the rodeo and thought, I am a real cowboy and thought everyone thought I was a real cowboy.
The public has always expected me to be a playboy, and a decent chap never lets his public down.
I remember how my mother would bring us to chapel on Sundays... and my father used to wait outside. One of the things that I picked up from my father and my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the way of God. For me, at least, it got in the way.
I studied journalism at The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. I did my graduate work at Emerson in Boston, and I was actually a reporter for a year in New York and New Jersey. It dawned on me that I wasn't cut out for that line of work. I mean... there's a certain thing that really good reports have that I just didn't.
The warmest place I've ever been is my home here in Chapel Hill. It's an oasis of comfort and joy for me.
People always say to me, 'It must have been wonderful coming from old Hollywood, with all those movie stars,' but I never knew anyone. I didn't even know who Charlie Chaplin was. My parents really kept me away from it all.
Who made me laugh when I was growing was Chaplin and the Marx Brothers, and then moving on, there were so many that I was a writer for for many years: I was a writer for the Smothers Brothers, Lily Tomlin, then I started on 'Saturday Night Live' as the head writer the first year we started it.
I used to read five psalms every day - that teaches me how to get along with God. Then I read a chapter of Proverbs every day and that teaches me how to get along with my fellow man.
You will, I am sure, agree with me that... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have been really intolerable.
It seems to me that, in every culture, I come across a chapter headed 'Wisdom.' And then I know exactly what is going to follow: 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.'
People have asked me why I made the first chapter of my first novel so long, and in an invented English. The only answer I can come up with that satisfies me is, 'To keep out the scum.'
I read nonfiction almost exclusively - both for research and also for pleasure. When I read fiction, it's almost always in the thriller genre, and it needs to rivet me in the opening few chapters.
I always wanted to be a character actor rather than the poster boy that they tried to make me 100 years ago. An actor has a degree of responsibility to change for the audience, to give them something new each time, to surprise and not bore them.
I always see myself as a character actor, but Remington Steele was me. I gave up on trying to be any character. I just put myself as me in this world of Remington Steele and the grand pretender.
I think I'm a character actress in a leading lady's body, but the industry doesn't really see me that way.
I'd hate to lose the character actress part of me, because, by God, the parts are much more interesting.
Most horror films fail to scare me. I think 'The Ring' plays more as a psychological thriller. It's smarter, there's more character development and some of the themes explored go a little deeper.
When I read a good story, I often start thinking, 'Should I live my life according to what this character chooses and values?' It makes me think. I feel like I grew up to be a more mature person while thinking about character development in these fictional situations.
I make out a play list for every character and buy the records they would listen to; it helps me find their personas. What they play, where they stay, who they lay, is my matrix for character development.
Character roles only indicate that they're very different from who you are as a person, and for me, it's fun hiding behind characters that are so unlike who I am.
