I like acting for myself as a director. I act and I know that I'll have a chance to have some say in what gets used and that I'll be able to give myself enough takes and be on the same page as myself about how the scene should play.
As a writer, I challenge myself not to tell the same story - to tackle different characters with different issues.
I love tattoos. And mine symbolise who I really am. I have a Samurai on my left arm. At a subconscious level, I connect to this warrior and model myself on his discipline, skills and honour. There is also a tribal tattoo and a Chinese symbol of faith. I have seen a lot of people getting tattoos just because it's a trend.
I'm not a fighter, but in my mind I'm fighting every day. 'What's new? What am I doing?' I'm fighting myself. My soul is samurai. My roots aren't samurai, but my soul is.
I remember the first scene I shot on 'The Blind Side.' I was with Sandra Bullock, and I kept trying to stop myself thinking, 'Oh my God, I can't believe I'm in a movie with her.'
I cannot starve myself. I'm a foodie! I make fabulous pastas, Indian food, parathas and club sandwiches!
I'll speak for myself, but there's a lot of humor to be found in sarcasm and darkness. You talk to any paramedic, they survive by developing a pretty off-kilter sense of humor.
I got into therapy in the fifth grade because I said in a sarcastic way that I was going to kill myself, and they didn't get it then. Nothing's changed.
Sometimes I used to think to myself, 'Have I lost a sense of humor?' but I don't think that I have. I think one can be as snarky and sarcastic as lots of people, but I have never found that it makes me particularly happy.
I never said I'm not a feminist! I wrote one column where I was being sarcastic, and I called myself a 'wombist'. Now which sane person would say that 'wombist' is a better term than feminist? I was being sarcastic, and perhaps it was my fault in not getting the point across as clearly as I would have liked to. I don't think there's any doubt.
A message I've been telling myself: the cinema is very conservative, and unless you have a story that satisfies you, that is within the unchallenging zone, but you love it, you can't do it as cinema. Otherwise, you better go do it for television, which is more daring now.
I will not leave a corner of my consciousness covered up, but saturate myself with the strange and extraordinary new conditions of this life, and it will all refine itself into poetry later on.
I started working myself from about 14, really, so I wasn't a burden on my family. I did a paper round and a milk round. When I was 15 or 16, I worked in a supermarket on Saturdays stacking shelves, and then every summer I temped, right through university until my working days started.
I'd describe myself as a saver, but just sometimes I can spend like a kicking horse! Ryman is the one shop I can't go past without going into. I just can't resist lovely stationery.
I'm happiest at home hanging out with the kids... Having a family has been my saving grace because I don't work back to back on anything or I'd drive myself to an early grave with guilt and worry for my family, whom I'd never see.
I started LearnVest with a tiny savings account where I paid designers, technologists, and even bartered... Because I started with paying for things myself with my own savings, it sharpened my focus of how to spend money.
Most humbly, my beloved Saviour, I bow myself before thee. I am a worm and no man. I alone deserve to suffer. I alone shrink from suffering. I was with thee in thy days of joy, singing 'Hosanna,' and I wished to make thee King. Now, in thine hour of suffering, I am far from thee.
I was a very creative child. I played the saxophone and piano, and I was always writing poetry and stories, or drawing in my notebook. I just tried to express myself through as many creative outlets as possible. And in high school, I started to get really into photography and videography and would spend hours working on it.
After I left Texas and went to California, I had a hard time getting anyone to play anything that I was writing, so I had to end up playing them myself. And that's how I ended up just being a saxophone player.
My influence is probably more from American crime writers than any Europeans. And I hardly read any Scandinavian crime before I started writing myself. I wasn't a great crime reader to begin with.
