I'm a pretty nice dude. I have fun, and people take it the wrong way.
You can't be two people in your brain, one rock dude and a dad - there's something in the middle of them, and that's really what you are and that's going to make you the best dad - not when you try to be one or the other.
Being gritty doesn't mean not showing pain or pretending everything is O.K. In fact, when you look at healthy and successful and giving people, they are extraordinarily meta-cognitive. They're able to say things like, 'Dude, I totally lost my temper this morning.' That ability to reflect on yourself is signature to grit.
I slap people in public, especially erring policemen. I can even challenge them to a duel. I am a gunfighter.
In the past, rulers led their troops into battle and, even in peacetime, called themselves fathers of their people. And modern politics retains abundant masculine rituals. Prime minister's question time in Britain, for instance, is a stylised duel and tournament redolent of testosterone.
When you start dating another country star, the first question is, 'When are y'all gonna do a duet?' And what sucks about that is people expect you to do it whether you want to or not.
I wasn't, like, this top model; I was quietly doing my work, and when I became an actress, people started doing research, and everybody found out. People dug out photos, and suddenly people became interested - but no one was interested in my photos when I was a model.
I am excited to show people how, when you get older, you get deeper, you get more raw, you get more honest, and you stop pretending to be the person you think people want you to be. I stopped worrying about what people wanted me to say and just sort of dug deep into my personal arsenal of my mistakes and shameful thoughts.
I'd like to write songs for other people, see things from a different perspective. I'd like to watch things from the dugout instead of the pitch.
Even when they have a star that they're going after, casting directors love, if anything, just the excuse to see people. They like to have a dugout full of actors that they can go to.
People say I manipulate the media. Well, duh. We live in a media culture, so why on earth wouldn't I?
I do very few standards. Hardly any. Other people's tunes that I do are usually obscure tunes, for the most part, although I do a couple of Duke Ellington tunes that are well known.
I want people to feel what it was like in the '40s. That's when popular music in the United States was so beautiful. Frank Sinatra, the Pied Pipers, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Tommy Dorsey, Billie Holiday. That's when popular music had deeper values, to me. This was music that was selling millions of records.
It's a spirit that was given me and the relationships and meeting all these great people, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong; through Max I met a lot of people too. My first album was with Benny Carter.
We work so hard on our craft, and once we get out of Duke Ellington, there are not going to be people looking for technique. I worry about that a lot.
I've often stood silent at a party for hours listening to my movie idols turn into dull and little people.
When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.
I'm a meathead. I can't help it, man. You've got smart people and you've got dumb people.
I'm a meathead, man. You've got smart people, and you've got dumb people. I just happen to be dumb.
Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.
