There can be a progression to the dream; there can be steps to it. When you dissect any successful person's story, it's really rare that it was all or nothing. It's steps, and I just try to remind myself of that in terms of the things that I want; it's like, everything is a step, leading you to where you need to go.
I've probably done myself a disservice as a brand because the movies I've made. They've all been completely different.
I have always prided myself on if, hypothetically, the entertainment industry just dissolved, just went away today, I feel that I have enough marketable skills that I could still contribute to society and make a difference. I'm a very good typist.
I have found a unique opportunity to distinguish myself and to learn my trade. I am a general officer in the army of the United States of America. My zeal in their cause and my frankness have won their trust.
When working, my diet degrades to pizza three times a day, because I don't want to distract myself from anything.
I distracted myself from the fear and terrorism by thinking about things like how the universe began and whether time travel is possible.
When I work, I wear pants usually because I want to be comfortable. I wear dark colors, especially in winter, because I don't want to concentrate on myself but on what I'm working on. Because I really, really love clothes, I can start to think too much about myself. It's distracting.
I know that when I attached my sense of identity a little too closely to my work that I might be distracting myself from feelings of unworthiness. It wasn't the number of hours I worked or how bloodshot my eyes were that defined the difference. It was something internal.
I used to be really shy, and I think something happened in my brain where I was like, 'All right, I don't care anymore. I'm just going to be myself.' So I went to school wearing eyeliner and eye shadow, and they called my mom, telling her it was a distraction. My mom fought the school, and I got to wear makeup every day.
I would find myself getting deeply distressed if I lived in hindsight all the time.
With every year that passes, I get further away from my target audience, and while I've been happy to think of myself as a father figure to these kids, I'd be a little distressed to be thought of as a grandfather figure.
I don't really like meetings, I like recording and performing music. I need to set myself up for when the time does come that I need better distribution or just a bigger team behind me.
And while I might not always agree with the viewpoint I have to portray, because I play a district attorney, as an actress I can always tell myself that my character is trying to take the moral high ground.
To me, directing movies is just that. It's a need to question myself and set the things that disturb me on the table.
If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don't regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.
I was always very academically focused when I was growing up, and music was something for which I really had no preconceptions or expectations for myself or really any rules. It kind of represented, at least for me, a divergent path of creativity and self-discovery.
I think it was a good and necessary thing that the American upper class diversified, and that more African-Americans and Jews and Catholics (like myself) and women now share privileges and powers once reserved for Protestant white men.
By always looking out and always moving myself forward and being disciplined and being open to new experiences, I think that's how I was able to diversify because if it felt right to me creatively, I went for it. It didn't matter if I knew how to do that, I just did it because my creative heart felt pulled to it. That seems to have worked out.
When I'm in a place like Iceland, I allow myself to take a little more time to divert off onto other paths creatively for a while and see what comes to me.
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
