I didn't start making a real living until eight or nine years in. Even after 'Goodfellas' came out, I was still working as a waiter, and people would recognize me - that was an odd experience. But when 'The Sopranos' hit, that was like an exponential leap.
It's important to me to try and expose young people to the things they believe are off-limits to them. I tell them, 'There are no walls, only the ones we put up.' My advice to young people looking at my life is not to follow my footprint but to go out there and make their own.
The most important thing people did for me was to expose me to new things.
I always liked film as a teaching tool - a way of getting exposed to ideas that had never been presented to me. It just wasn't on the list of career options where I grew up.
I just feel like every kid is growing up too fast and they're seeing too much. Everything is about sex, and that's fine for me. I'm not saying I don't like it. But I don't think it should be everywhere, where kids are exposed to everything sexual. Because they have to have some innocence; there's just no innocence left.
I like the idea of infiltrating an area that is not really exposed to me or my work.
For me, it's always more difficult and slightly exposing to play something that's close to yourself. I always like to try to hide, just because I can't stand the way I look.
If I was to have a reality show, it wouldn't be a show based on my personal life. I'd want it to showcase me and my girls on tour, like living life as a young artist, not exposing what goes on in my family situations.
I'm all about showing people that I'm a little messed up, I have a lot of the same problems you have. By exposing myself and putting myself out there, people can relate to me and my act won't grow stale. I mean, nobody wants to hear a comedian say, 'Life is great.'
I'm frustrated by something, it's my fault for exposing myself to it in the first place. The rumor mill always seemed like a grass fire to me. Why walk out in the middle of the field, it's just going to flame out and go away just like everything else does?
My early exposure to all the leviathans of the Saturday matinee creature features inspired me, when I grew up, to make 'Jurassic Park.'
The release of 'Lungs' was so hard. It was terrifying, because it was the first time doing everything. The first experiences of media exposure were almost paralysing. I spent a lot of time crying on the floor of the studio - it sent me a bit mad.
I got into acting as a young child on account of a sort of arbitrary thing. A friend of my mom's was a casting director, so really, as kind of a lark, I had a couple of acting jobs that had just enough exposure to give me the option to continue if I wanted to. I followed through with it.
Why not, when it can be done without exposure or expense, let me rescue some of America's miserable children from vice and guilt?
O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, you express me better than I can express myself.
It is not true that I invented what is called the Montessori Method... I have studied the child; I have taken what the child has given me and expressed it, and that is what is called the Montessori Method.
To me, fashion is ceaselessly fascinating because it is an expression of self.
And that Newman wasn't, and yet to me Pollock is just as radical and unlike Expressionism as Newman.
When I was growing up, nothing unpleasant was shown in the home. And when I was in art school, the only art that was presented to me was Abstract Expressionism. But I was interested in the grim stuff. It seemed more exciting.
I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.
