Everything was based on my life and the way I grew up. Some of the bits I'm most proud of in 'Haters Back Off' actually happened.
A frustration that I've had recently is that a lot of songs that I listen to draw on scenarios that aren't very realistic, so I just wanted to do something that was more down to earth. And I think my fans, who already know a lot about me, will learn something new.
A lot of things in 'Parents' I find very truthful.
As an actor, what I can do is tell the truth. At least, I hope I can tell the truth - a dramatic truth, but still an honest portrayal.
I've always felt that acting is acting, at the end of the day, so whether you're doing comedy or heavy drama or anything else in between, you always have to bring a semblance of honesty to it. It's all make believe.
I don't like people being something that they ain't, and we got a lot of that in rap right now.
He reflected. 'I know a lot of different kids of people; what I want is to show each of them how the others really are. You hear so many lies!
All I try to do is as earnestly and as acutely as I can, conceive a character and try to portray this character just honestly. If the humor is within the absurdity and the awfulness of situations, then let it be seen that way.
As the camera, I try to subordinate every word to be truthful and honest to each character's context.
(The Song Remains The Same) is not a great film, but there's no point in making excuses. It's just a reasonably honest statement of where we were at that particular time. It's very difficult for me to watch it now, but I'd like to see it in a year's time just to see how it stands up.
I love movie musicals because I think there is an amount of emotional honesty that's needed to portray someone who feels so deeply that all they can do is break into song.
I don't really distinguish between sympathy and honesty when I'm writing. The two go together - I'm interested in inhabiting my characters, seeing the world through their eyes.
The thing about Precious, she's so far from a Hollywood character. She's so honest and real, I definitely felt like I knew her.
In my books my characters experience things as they are. My books allow youth an honest look at important issues affecting them. As adults we want to believe things like sex abuse or drug use are not happening anymore, or happening less and less, but that's not the case and we need to acknowledge that. We can't make life prettier for youth, but we can arm them.
People will get tired of overly retouched images soon and they'll want something different. If people have too much reality, they want fantasy. What matters most is what the image communicates. I remember the first roll of film I shot at high school, the contact sheet went from these really worthy images of cracks in the wall and ended up with all of my dancer friends naked in Renaissance poses.
I don't want to be coy. It's so important for me to be as genuine as possible, so I don't want to stop when it comes to rendering sex the way that most people have it, which is unclothed.
As an actor, there's no faking it.
So many times, you get a script and it says, "And then, the character cries," and you read the lines and think, "That would never make me cry. Those lines are so untruthful." My approach is just to be honest to the situation.
I think the film is beautifully realised. His legacy as a journalist was recorded - as it were - well, and certainly the important issues of the '50s - or even today - are delivered and presented to the audience in a rather honest and objective way.
We live in a world in which the only utopian visions arrive in commercial breaks: magical visions of an impossibly hospitable world, peopled by bright-eyed attractive men, women, children... Where nobody dies... In my worlds people died. And I thought that was honest. I thought I was being honest.
It's the emotional trigger points that are important to me because I know if I could believe in the characters and try and imagine how they felt then I'd be able to do something quite honest.
Motherhood is nitty and gritty and brutal and wonderful, but everything I read is about the wonderful parts. Sometimes, you're really in the trenches!
We've done a lot of films now about the IRA, we can move on from all that. I loved '71 because I think it showed a very honest trail and what it was actually like. It wasn't one-sided. I really respect ['71 director] Yann [Demange] for what he did. But we have done a lot of those things.
You want to be honest with a character and play it truthfully, and you want to be genuine with your character.
When I was writing the memoir, every page was a battle with myself because I knew I had to tell the truth. That's what the memoir form demands. I also had to figure out how much of the truth do I tell, how do I make the truth as balanced as I possibly can? How do I make these people as complicated and as human and as unique and as multifaceted as I possibly can? For me, that was the way I attempted to counteract some of that criticism.
