As an actor, I have casting issues. I'm a minority. I don't have trouble making a living, but as far as being on the food chain of the pecking order of actors, I'm not at the top of it. With the jobs that I do, there are always control issues with directors and producers.
The best and brightest don't go into politics. The best and brightest are at Goldman Sachs.
I went to school at MIT with a whole bunch of engineers. And then I started work one day and asked myself, 'Why do all of these MIT Ph.D.s work for Harvard M.B.A.s?' Why should it be like that? I was one of those engineers who thought, 'Why are these people making those dumb decisions?' So it's fun to be the person making them.
Admittedly, scientific authority is not distributed evenly throughout the body of scientists; some distinguished members of the profession predominate over others of a more junior standing.
I am old enough to think the word 'journalist' is not all that noble a designation. Journalist - that record keeper, quote taker and processor of press releases - was, in the world of letters I grew up in, a lower-down job. To be a writer - once the ambition of every journalist - was to be the greater truth teller.
In 'The Travelers,' everyone is defined by his or her relationship to work. I put each character on a different rung of the ladder: from the lowliest assistant to a powerful man in the world of media.
I'm an entrepreneur first and a wine critic second.
Literature is the most noble of professions. In fact, it is about the only one fit for a man.
Most of the people we worked with were men. And the women were secretaries.
I am an actress first, a singer second.
Some stuntmen become actors, but Hollywood is a caste-oriented society. Most of the time you just don't have the opportunity to get out of your field if you're a grip, an electrician, stuntman, set designer, director or actor.
I am a student first, teacher second.
I don't call acting a real job, and writing is a hobby.
Laborers want their kids to be merchants or business people. Business people want their kids to be professionals. Professionals want their kids to be academics, professors. Academics want their kids to be artists. And artists don't care if their kids are laborers or not. They can be anything.
When I came into the acting profession, it was quite hierarchical. You didn't sit at the same table as the leading actor. Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud... these were very, very intimidating and powerful people.
I think the writer's quite low down in the hierarchy really. But the fact that they took the piss out of Nicholas [Hynter] who, besides being the director, is also director of the National Theatre is, I'd have thought, slightly more risky.
I was a trader for a company. That's different from the brokers who we sort of disdain as sort of just errand boys.
Wait. You work for me?" "I prefer to think of it as managing your incompetence.
In this business, you have a hierarchy of stars. Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks - you name 'em, they can play any part they want. Guys like me who are somewhere down in the middle of the pack, that's a different story. I can do things in the theater that I can't do anyplace else.
I asked [my father] what there was to make doctoring more disgusting than nursing, which women were always doing, and which ladies had done publicly in the Crimea. He could not tell me.
Anyplace of work where you have a cross section of work, you have mini-ecosystem. A little representation of what the planet is. You have the Alpha Dog. You have the young ones, the old ones. The pissed off one. The quiet one.
Generally speaking, the best people nowadays go into journalism, the second best into business, the rubbish into politics and the shits into law
