You're talking about meaning. I want to talk about the picture.
I've never heard a man in a suit tell me what to wear; that's not their forte. You hire your stylist; whatever someone's image is as an artist is what they've chosen to portray.
They paint me as a villain, I just autograph the artwork.
In a way, it's like the photographer always has his vision of me. The pictures that I'm known for are not really my image, they're always the photographer's vision of me. I can look a hundred different ways, but what people see of me in pictures is not really my image.
People are very surprised to hear me say that a lot of my values are Christian values. I think that's part of my shock. I just don't like the way that Christianity combined with the influence of television has bred a nation of weakness. (Christian television do get the facts wrong sometimes and the image they portray turns most people off.)
Different people describe me in a different ways. Some describe me as the living Buddha. Nonsense. Some describe me as 'God-king.' Nonsense. Some consider me as a demon or a wolf in Buddhist robes. That also, I think nonsense.
We often get pigeon-holed as a tough guy, or whatever else. I've been pigeon-holed as a heavy and serious, and almost a baddy, but not quite a baddy, over the years of my work in television, particularly.
The truth is, one can work for another ten years and be playing parts, pushing yourself as hard as you can, and you are still accused of that. You're still tainted with that brush. I'm not called Jude Law, I have three names; I'm called 'Hunk Jude Law'.
A woman's body and a woman's image is a very political thing, so I trust another woman to understand what that's like and how to portray it in a way people can relate to.
Modeling is a lonely business... You don't speak. You don't really portray anything but an image... the business is so superfluous about dealing with the outside, it messes with your mind.
Eazy-E is going to remain Eazy-E. But I will not portray Compton as a bad city.
Hollywood is a bit of a publicity game where it's constantly trying to portray things and put up this image and I was not interested in that.
In the past, I’ve had my share of good reviews, but it’s always the crazy, scary, weirdo guy. I don’t even know how it happened. Look at me. I mean, when I’m naked, I look like a bald chicken. How did I get to be a scary bad guy?
There was no such person as Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe was an invention of hers. A genius invention that she created, like an author creates a character. She understood photography, and she also understood what makes a great photograph. She related to it as if she were giving a performance. She gave more to the still camera than any actress-any woman- I've ever photographed.
What people think about you is not supposed to matter much, so long as you yourself know where the truth lies; but I have found out, as have others who move in and out of newspaper headlines, that on occasion it can matter a good deal. For once you enter the world of headlines you learn there is not one truth but two: the one which you know from the facts; and the one which the public, or at any rate a highly imaginative part of the public, acquires by osmosis.
I'm aware that people see me as a sex symbol, and it's getting me attention. But I know I can act.
The stuff that I have perhaps become known for that's based on fact, and English statesmen shouting at each other all the time, doesn't entirely represent who I am. I am not a politics wonk.
