I'm a big believer that an actor should be able to pick up any piece of material and act it, the way a good musician can.
I try not to limit myself. The actors that inspire me are the comedians and the people able to shape-shift into different roles and into different media. That ensures your longevity as an artist and prevents you from getting bored with yourself and, hopefully, prevents people from getting bored with you.
An actress can only play a woman. I'm an actor, I can play anything.
I love seeing when actors go from one genre to the next because I feel like most of them can pull it off.
When you hire Sam Jackson, he'll figure out the character, and he'll figure out the character's look, and he'll provide it to you. With Sam Jackson, you basically yell 'action', you go get a sandwich, and you come back and yell 'cut.'
I want to play everything. I want to be like Christian Bale: I want to be able to be Batman and then, like, his character in 'The Fighter.' That is what is so impressive about really good actors, that they can be character actors and leading men at the same time.
I'm not a snob... there's room for entertainment that reaches a lot of people and can be really good, but you don't just have to be one kind of actor.
A lot of straight actors are actively searching for gay roles because it is something different to do.
Make sure a certain percentage of the people that you're hiring are generalists so that you can be, kind of reconfigured in the workforce pretty easily.
One week you may be an actor, and the next week you had to be nimble enough to be a TV host. And the week after that, you might have to do some stand-up or be in an improv company or write and sing a song somewhere.
People with highly transferable skills may be specialists in certain areas, but they're also incredible generalists - something businesses that want to grow need.
