It’s much harder to play beloved than to play a rotten guy. Rotten guy is a piece of cake. So playing a beloved person really sets a high bar for your behavior and your acting and what you project.
The only way we’ll ever know what it’s like to be you is if you work your best at being you as often as you can, and keep reminding yourself: That’s where home is.
You know the theory of cell irritability? If you take an amoeba cell and poke it a thousand times, it will change and then re-form into its original shape. And then, the thousandth time you poke this amoeba.
I go home and stay there. I wash and scrub up each day, and that’s it. One month I actually grew a moustache, just so I could say that I’d done something.
I would jump into the middle of the street and say, “excuse me, there’s a Mercedes that’s got to get through here.” And I would push people out of the way, “get out of the way! Let him through!” Smacking their cars and stuff. Just like, “whack” and you just jump into it.
So I went, and one of the funniest film moments I’ve ever had was when they introduced the New York film critics. They all stood up – motley isn’t the word for that group.
You have to be as light as you can be and not get weighed down and stuck in your emotion, stuck in your body, stuck in your head. You just want to always be trying to elevate somehow.
Back then, when a movie came out and people saw you on the street, their reaction was so supercharged that it was scary. It would frighten other people. It used to really rattle me.
When I feel like I’m stuck, I do something – not like I’m Mother Teresa or anything, but there’s someone that’s forgotten about in your life, all the time. Someone that could use an ‘Attaboy’ or a ‘How you doin’ out there.
I don’t feel like it’s pressure. It’s more of an obligation – not to entertain or be funny, but to have a certain levity. I mean, there’s got to be a lightness in your leg.
