Ethan Hawke traces his acting origins to a 1984 Joe Dante film where he and River Phoenix, both 14, drove through Paramount’s gates with his grandmother—only for the project to flop, crushing their early stardom dreams. At 19, he abandoned college after securing a role in Dead Poets Society, framing it as a gamble, while his mother’s devastation later fueled his creation of an independent theater company. Hawke contrasts fame’s "mercury-like" poison with immersive roles like Leave the World Behind and White Fang, where method acting and animal trust revealed authenticity’s power. With Rogan, he dissects self-consciousness as a performance killer, citing Robert De Niro’s ownership of work and Paul Dano’s resilience, while warning young actors against ego—success without presence feels hollow. Hawke’s pursuit of art over money mirrors Denzel Washington’s improvisational mastery in Training Day, proving true fulfillment lies in creation, not validation. [Automatically generated summary]
And my next door neighbor, he lived like four houses down.
He took an acting class at the Paul Robeson Center of Performing Arts.
And so my mother signed me up so that I could get picked up by his mom, you know, taken to acting class in the winter and get dropped off, you know, and be at home.
And I went there and this head of a local theater company came by to teach an improv seminar kind of thing.
I mean, I'm 12 years old, right?
And afterwards in the parking lot, he said, hey, you want to be in a play?
I said, what do you mean?
He says, I got a part of a guy who's a knight.
You get to have a sword.
And I said, well, I have any lines?
He said, you'll have one line.
I said, all right, cool.
And I asked my mom and she said, do I have to pay?
And I said, I don't think so.
I think they're going to pay me.
So I went and I did this play.
And it was George Bernard Shaw's St. Joan at the McCarter Theater in New Jersey.
And it was an incredible experience, to be honest with you, because my parents hated their jobs.
You know, they would go to work and their life happened on the periphery of their employment.
You know, my mom would take the train to New York, and so she wouldn't get home till 7.30.
Something she would leave at dawn.
And she was as miserable at work, I mean.
And I went to this rehearsal and everyone was having, they were talking about whether or not God existed.
They were talking about what they believed in.
They would dress up in these crazy outfits.
And then we did the play and they got a standing ovation.
And it was so much fun.
And it was the first time I saw, you could do this for a living?
You know, a lot of the actors aren't people you've heard of or anything like that, but they were real actors and they loved their job.
And the rehearsal room was so kind of thrilling watching them figure out where people should stand and what was important and what was the scene about and what was the theme of the play and how could this scene fit in with the larger context.
And I just decided that's what I wanted to do.
And a lot of kids want to act, so that doesn't mean very much.
But through this other friend of mine, I started hearing about open casting calls in New York.
And I asked my mom if I could go on some of these big auditions.
And again, she said, is it going to cost me any money?
She said, if I paid for my own train fare, I could go to these auditions.
And so I took some Polaroids and went on a few of these big auditions and I got one of them.
And it was for this big, in 1984, it was a $30 million movie directed by the guy who just done Gremlins, right?
Joe Dante.
And I thought I was a made man.
I mean, it was just, it was absolutely incredible to be sucked out of suburban America and brought to L.A. My first scene partner was River Phoenix, and all of a sudden, I'm in LA.
And, You know, my mom couldn't quit her job or anything, so my mom had a really turbulent relationship with her mother.
But her mother, her mother and she didn't really know each other, and so her mother said she'd be my guardian.
And my mom designed this as a way to maybe have a family healing.
But my grandmother was a piece of work.
And we lived together in Koreatown.
That's what they called it.
And it was wild.
And she, I remember we drove into Paramount studios.
You know, you can picture it, the image from the Godfather, and you had the big gates.
And my grandmother had always wanted to be a movie star.
But you got to understand, you know, when you're that age, you think you're dying to be 18, dying to be 16.
We went off, River and I stole a pack of camel cigarettes because we both wanted to be like James Dean.
And we had a lot of fun.
That's the truth.
But the movie came out, and I remember River and I going to the bathroom at the premiere, and we had grown a lot from the time we shot the movie to the time it came out.
And nobody in the bathroom really recognized us.
And they were all talking about what a turkey the movie was, how terrible it was.
And I remember just looking in the eyes, like, it wasn't the narrative we thought, you know, we had bought into the dream that, you know, we were going to be whatever teen icon we were thinking of at the time.
And it died a quick and salty death, my dream.
And I went back to high school and put away my dream of being an actor.
It seemed like it was this isolated, almost like choose your own adventure book or something, where I got to see what Hollywood was like, but then have it denied.
And it kind of like putting your hand in a flame.
It was not a good feeling when it was over.
And then, you know, four years or so went by, and I graduated high school and I was off at college and I heard about these auditions for a movie called Dead Poets Society.
And I hated college.
I was miserable.
And I thought, I'll take the bus in and I'll go on one of these open casting calls again.
And if I get the part, this is what I decided.
If I get the part, I'll do that.
And if I don't get the part, I'll join the Merchant Marines and be like Jack London.
That was my fantasy at the time.
I remember calling my sister and saying, all right, there's seven parts.
This is how dumb I was.
I was like, there's seven parts.
If I don't get one of those, I must suck, you know?
So, which is not true at all.
But I ended up getting one of them.
And I dropped out of college.
And the success of Dead Poets Society sent me, you know, was like a trajectory.
It shot me down a different course of water than I was on before.
I cannot tell you how grateful I am for that first experience.
First of all, if for no other reason than in the success of Dead Poets Society, I didn't take it seriously at all.
I didn't even realize that the movie was successful until a couple years later because I had so braced myself for failure, you know, perception of failure anyway.
I had no expectations, but I was certain I wasn't going to be a star.
I was positive of it.
I saw it as a way to make some money and maybe learn about writing and learn about film and a way to get out of college.
Now, what happened is when I got there, I met all these other young men who were in love with acting.
And that I started watching movies with them and talking about movies with them and seeing the light in their eyes.
And we'd go to set, and there was Robin Williams.
You know, we had Peter Weir, who had just directed Witness, one of my favorite movies of all time at that point.
And he was a master.
I mean, he was not a lightweight human being.
He was a heavyweight human being.
And he would lead rehearsals and he would talk about acting and performance in a way that I hadn't.
Well, you know, I heard people talk about it that way when we were doing St. Joan, when I was doing the like he talked about it like we were making art and like we were on a mission beyond success or failure.
And it was it was an invitation to a lifestyle, a life commitment.
And what I didn't realize at the time, that's what that movie's about, too.
You know, so the movie itself is a guided meditation on Carpe Diem, right?
It's a meditation on gather ye rosebuds while ye may.
I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.
You know, this is kind of stuff that I was getting inundated with in rehearsal.
And so that was, I didn't, I wouldn't have told you that on the day I wrapped Dead Poets Society that my life had changed, but looking back, it had.
I read every interview she does for exactly that reason.
It's so difficult.
I tell parents all the time, like, children acting is a wonderful thing.
Put them in the school play.
It's so good for them.
Get them singing lessons.
It's so good for them.
Sing in the church choir, it's so good for them.
But to be a professional actor at a young age is this, it's dangerous in extremely insidious ways that are very, very hard to perceive when it's happening.
I think you going back to school and living a normal life for five, six years or whatever it was before you left college, I just think that's critical.
That's the developmental process of the normal maturation of a person when they go through adolescence, teenage years, into college, young adult.
Then you can kind of handle things.
And then maybe you're also fortunate that, like you said, Dead Poet Society, you didn't get too huge from it.
But then I had the years after that, I have to give a shout out to my mom, who was just so devastated that I dropped out of college.
I mean, she just couldn't stop crying about it, you know.
And it filled me with a desire to show her that I was taking responsibility for my own education, which is what I said I would do.
And so I started a theater company, and I worked really hard at a lot of different things, writing and reading and thinking, and mostly with this theater company, where I met a lot of young people who were interested in what I was doing, but we weren't paid any money.
And we worked our asses off and we built sets.
And we, you know, it was fun.
I don't want to lie.
We had a great time.
But it was a college experience that I gave myself through this theater company.
And that changed me because I met a lot of people who were really excellent at what I do that weren't making a lot of money.
I met a lot of people who loved it as much as I do, who weren't getting their picture taken, who weren't being told they were special.
I knew how gifted they were.
I could understand.
I had a little bit of balance and a little bit of humility to go along with the superficial elements of my chosen field.
Throughout my life, I have had opportunities presented to me, and I had enough intuition and enough intelligence maybe to follow it.
But I do think of it, I think about it all the time.
All the ways that are imperceptible on the Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday that they happen, but where your life is kind of guided and it doesn't really feel by your own doing.
Yeah, I know it sounds wacky to say, but I believe it too.
I mean, I don't publicly profess it as the definite reason why everything happens, but there's a bunch of, I think, most people that have gotten anywhere in life, there's moments in their life where they're like, how did that happen?
Like, why did this feel like it was a destined path?
I wonder how other people feel, but I do think one of the keys, I think that probably everybody has a path that is there for them.
And the trick about knowing yourself, the value and taking time to like be still with yourself and listen to yourself, you know, that there's an expression, the voice of our spirit is extremely gentle.
But if you can hear it, that thing, intuition, that thing, the path, the idea of a guardian angel, you can see what's happening around you if you're in touch with yourself.
And if you're not in touch with yourself, you keep tripping on the same, you're not seeing the angles and the roads that might be available to you.
So I do think that part of the trick is taking time to actually get to know yourself so that you can see the light when it appears.
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And I think I was a big part of her on her brain a lot, worrying.
It was a big, is this kid going to be all right?
Is this kid going to be all right?
It makes a lot of noise in your head, you know.
Sure.
And I was all right.
And she looked around, and I remember her saying that, you know, if an accident happened today, when they do happen, and I died, I would be extremely disappointed in myself.
She was probably, I don't know, 46 or something when she said this, younger than I am now.
And she said, I don't want to be disappointed in my life.
So she joined the Peace Corps, which she wasn't all that impressed with.
But they sent her to Romania, and she fell in love with Romania, and she fell in love with the people there.
And she got obsessed with the racism against the gypsy culture, the Roma culture, I'm supposed to call it.
And it reminded her a lot of growing up here in the 60s and the racism she saw as a young girl.
And she just decided to do something about it.
She spent 25 years there, and she got thousands of kids into school who wouldn't have gone to school.
She just recently retired back to Fort Worth.
And she's a different woman than the woman I grew up with, which is, I think, a remarkable story.
I love both the women, the woman now, and the woman I grew up with.
I don't want to paint some portrait that she was miserable.
She had so much, she just was miserable at work.
You know, she was not a miserable person to be with, the opposite.
And she kept that fire in herself alive enough to, when the window presented itself, she took it and she took it hard.
I mean, she disappeared for a quarter of a century to Romania.
It was a young woman born in Fort Worth, right?
And that's a wild thing to do.
And she made a huge impact.
And I'm extremely proud of her and proud of the work that she's done.
And so is everybody who knows her.
And now she's in Fort Worth doing her thing and has a different sense of herself because she followed her own intuition and her own path.
When as an actor, I mean, one of the more fascinating things to me about watching people is how they can assume different identities.
And how critical is it to have had so many different people in your life and different life experiences to draw from to try to understand things through their eyes?
If you're a regular person running through, if you're a stockbroker, you're running through the world thinking like a stockbroker, thinking, well, what would be like to be a janitor?
What is it like to be this guy who's trying to raise a family and he's got a drug dealer in his neighborhood that's causing problems and your life is this constant state of drama?
Like you're drawing from all these different experiences.
So having had like not, I mean, I wouldn't say it's your life was complicated, but it sounds like you have a really good mom, but complicated, like, and not necessarily that stable in that way.
You're young and you're, you know, you're trying this thing out and you're going off to Hollywood and then you're coming back and going to college.
Like having all these different bizarre interactions with people and life experiences.
How much do you draw upon that when you're trying to like create a character?
Now I'm going to get cast as a LA cop, going to do ride-arounds through Los Angeles in the back seat of a cop car, right when the crash unit thing was happening.
And I'm not, it's not, it's even, it's different than being a journalist and writing about it.
I'm really trying to imagine being them.
And I'm not looking at it from a judgmental point of view.
I don't have an agenda about whether they're a good person or a bad person or whether this Army sergeant should have made that decision or that one.
I'm thinking, well, why did he make it?
Why did he make it?
Why did he do that?
I play a jazz musician, a drug addict.
I'm not sitting there judging him what a bad person.
I'm thinking, why did he do it?
It's a painkiller.
Why is he taking it?
Where's his music come from?
Why is it so important to him?
Why does he practice 12 hours a day?
What is that about?
All these characters are these invitations to A, expand your own sense of what identity means.
Like, who is Joe Rogan?
And who Joe Rogan is with his mom is a little different than he's watching the Super Bowl with his best friends.
Who Joe Rogan is at 40 is different than he is at 20.
We have inside of us so many aspects to ourselves.
You know, when we're in love, you change.
When you see your child for the first time, you change.
Your biology, your chemicals start to shift a little bit.
If you're in a violent situation, your molecular structure alters a little bit.
And you start to realize that that's not you and that's not you and that's not you.
They're all you.
And that's what performing is like.
And you start to see society and see yourself and see a continuity that is really kind of exciting.
I've had if you don't get ruined by, oh, breaking your arm, patting yourself on the back or something like that.
I've met a bunch of older actors who've lived really interesting lives that I've learned.
It's like I once had dinner with Vanessa Redgrave, this old English actress.
She'd spent her life doing Shakespeare and Chekhov and Beckett and Tennessee Williams.
She'd spent her life with some of the greatest minds of the last 50 years.
And she carries that with her.
She's powerfully intelligent and powerfully humble woman.
And it's like being next to somebody you really admire, you know, a master craftsman, doesn't matter what the craft is, when you take it to a high level, it has a lot to teach you.
So anyway, that was a multi-part question.
The other thing that part of your question is, how did I stay balanced?
And a lot of it had to do with my father, who has, he doesn't care about celebrity.
He doesn't particularly think it's very interesting.
Not in a judgmental way.
He really cares about integrity and whether you're a good person and whether you tell the truth.
And it's not interesting to him how much money you make.
That's not where his value system is placed on whether he's naturally suspicious of people who want too much attention, naturally suspicious of that in me, which was good for me.
He was very realistic about the chances I had of making a profession out of this.
That's not a bad thing.
You know, everybody says, it's so great to tell people to follow your dreams, and it is important to follow your dreams.
But it's also important to be realistic and have a plan and take care of yourself.
And when you say you're going to do something, to do it, to show up when you're asked to tell the truth, all these things.
So whenever things would start to go well, I had this person in my life that's very important to me who doesn't place a value on anything superficial.
And when we talked about why it's so hard to meet young people in this profession who make it, what starts to happen, regardless of how good or not good your parents are or something, your circle can get infiltrated with a lot of people trying to make money off you.
And that's dangerous because they don't care about you.
Or it's going to be good for you in the next three years, but they don't have your long-term what is going to be good for the 65-year-old version of you.
You know, is this, like you said, yeah, if I could have decided my life, Explorers would have been a huge hit.
It would have been ET big.
And you know what?
I wouldn't be here on this talk show today.
You know, so I don't want to be in charge of my whole life in that way.
Yeah, I don't know her either, but I do admire her when I hear her talk.
Yeah, me too.
That's why I always bring her up as the lone example that I've ever come across of someone who's been through childhood stardom that seems to be like very well and put together.
Yeah, he has this book with his, like, he has a mentor in Buddhism, and they kind of wrote a book together about the Tao of the Dude or something, something like that.
But it's actually, you know, I don't know if you've read The Tao of Willie.
I love all these kind of to the left versions of sometimes I find it hard to read the, I want to read what Willie thinks about the Dampada more than I want to read the Dampada myself.
Yeah, there it is.
Yeah.
The Dude and the Zen Master.
It's a great book, by the way.
He has a mantra in it that I just love, which is row, row, row your boat gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.
And he talks about how valuable that song has been to him.
I'm probably misquoting, but it meant a lot to me.
And it's just like, one step at a time, one step at a time, keep a smile on your face.
You know, I wrote a profile on Chris, I don't know, 15 years ago now for Rolling Stone Magazine.
And I made a documentary about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.
And I just finished a documentary about Merle Haggard.
And I really enjoy studying other people.
But Chris, you know, his life stories.
Do you know what I mean?
He was in the military and then he gave up everything, became a songwriter.
And it's kind of like, imagine if the equipment is like at the point of height of his career, it's like imagining If Brad Pitt had also written a number one single for Amy Winehouse, you know what I mean?
I mean, you know, he wrote me and Bobby McGee for Janice Joplin.
Yeah, having known people like that is so beneficial in your life.
They're not just like inspirational.
It's like a mental fuel, a type of nutrient almost.
It's like having a person that you know exists that's been through something, has come out amazing, and is so not tied down to anyone specific identity, has varied interests, pursues them all with passion.
Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with really appreciating people.
That concern of hero worship is legitimate because I think there are some people that will take a person and change who they are and make them not just extraordinary, but not even human.
It is a mistake, but it doesn't mean you can't love and deeply appreciate who they actually are, flaws and all, because that's what we all are.
And when someone is extraordinary and they have gone through so much or they have expressed so much and they do resonate with you so much, that's a valuable person.
And you should treat them like they're a valuable person.
Yeah, like I'll tell you, I don't know why it just flashed through my brain.
And when I was making this film, Chelsea Wallace, you have to understand, like, digital video, it just came out.
This movie, The Celebration, this Danish film, amazing movie.
Thomas Vinterberg directed it.
And it just kind of changed the rules.
The camera was cheap.
Like movies were always so expensive to make.
And now you could just, and I was like, all right, I made this movie for $100,000 in 2000.
And I was like, all right, we're just going to play with this new camera.
And I talked Chris Christopherson into being it.
He was my hero.
And he came, he agreed to do it.
I couldn't believe it.
You know, he shows up on the set.
And I had this elaborate shot I had planned.
I'd found this apartment that was amazing.
I hope this isn't boring, but I think it's a funny story.
So it's my first day with Chris, and I'm really trying to impress him.
Like, I've ripped this shot off from this French film I've seen.
It's amazing.
You're going to come into the, you're going to, his character orders a bottle of whiskey, and the guy delivers a bottle of whiskey to the room.
And in my idea, in this apartment, you could walk from the living room into the bedroom, and from the bedroom to the bathroom, and then out of the bathroom into the kitchen.
And the kitchen opened back up into the living room.
It was one of those New York City square apartments in the Chelsea Hotel, right?
And I showed him this path I wanted him to take.
And he was going to turn on the lights in this room.
And he was going to put on a cowboy hat while he's talking on the phone.
He's going to look in the mirror and point the thing.
And he's going to walk in the bathroom and flick that light on and then slam the mirror shut and then walk out and then sit down in the kitchen right where he was, pop open the whiskey and pour himself a glass right as he says the last line of the monologue.
And he looks at me and he goes, Are you an alcoholic?
And I was like, no, no, not really.
No.
He goes, I'm an alcoholic.
I said, oh, okay.
His character's name was Buddies.
He goes, Bud's an alcoholic.
Yeah, he goes, so you mean to tell me I order a bottle of whiskey, I'm about to fall off the wagon, and I don't open the fucker until I walk through this room, turn on a light, try on a cowboy hat, flip on a light, slam a mirror, and then sit down.
I was like, well, I think it would be a great shot.
And he's like, Ethan, there's no way in hell that I can remember all those lines and do all that that you're asking me.
That shot will never work.
So what I think is Bud's an alcoholic and he's going to get his bottle.
He's going to open it.
I'm going to sit down, say my monologue, and drink my whiskey.
Yeah, I'll stop in one second, but for some of you, I think you love this.
Apparently, the legend, Johnny Cash used to say that, you know, that song Sunday Morning Coming Down, I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn't hurt.
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn't bad, so I had one more for dessert.
Great song.
Okay, so Johnny Cash had a number one single out of this song.
And Johnny Cash would tell the story how Chris was flying helicopters offshore oil, and he landed in Johnny Cash's front yard with a beer in one hand and the song in the other on his helicopter and said, damn it, you got to listen to my song.
And I listened to it and went straight to number one.
That's the story that, you know, Cash would tell.
And I asked Chris about it, and he said, have you ever flown a such-and-such chopper?
And I said, no, I haven't.
He goes, there ain't no way in hell you can fly that thing with beer in one hand and a cassette in the other.
unidentified
That story, I don't know where he came up with that story.
You used the essential word in your first sentence, which is hypnosis.
I've spent my life studying what you just talked about.
And when you're acting with Denzel Washington, the power and strength and completeness of his imagination is hypnotizing.
And it's an invitation to join him.
And a great film is a collective imaginative experience.
When you watch The Godfather, you're not fucking thinking about Al Pacino or James Connor.
You think about Michael and Sonny and Tom and Vito.
I remember I watched Godfather and I felt like I'd see those guys at the nick game tomorrow.
That's how much, you're not thinking about the music.
You're not thinking about the shots.
It's all one thing.
All these disparate elements turn into one fist.
You cannot do it alone, right?
But the best people I've worked with, it's like the easiest example to show, like for anybody, when you go to a concert, every now and then it happens.
Bad acting is slightly the feeling you're talking about.
It's when somebody's slightly outside of it.
It's very, very hard to do.
And a lot of people study it and work on it and voice and speech is a huge – I mean this stuff is very – it's way more interesting to me than it would be to our audience here today.
But it's like all these elements of what creates hypnosis.
If you were, if we were talking about the violin, there are ways to practice the violin.
And I'm not going to make somebody a virtuoso, but I can, if I'm an expert violin, help you be better.
And I think the same is true for acting.
Acting is an art form.
It's beautiful.
It's some weird collage of where performance and writing and all these elements, music, it's all a part of it.
And when it's happening, it's all effortless.
And there's a lot of work you can do to inch it to being easier and to inch your scene partner into being easier.
And there are ways that they can help you.
And there's ways that they can ruin it.
They can break the dream.
But when it's good, it is like diving into a dream.
And it's a feeling that I got for the first time when I was 18 years old acting in Dead Poets Society.
And it is a feeling.
It was seconds long.
I mean, it was not much, but a feeling of disappearing.
And that's the irony I always feel about acting is that, you know, people think about actors and they see these pictures in the red carpet or something.
They think that's what acting is.
What it really is, it's a life of, that's completely antithetical to that of trying to disappear.
It feels like the celebration of the self, the celebration of the personality.
But when you're doing a scene with Philip Seymour Hoffman, you know, it's not Phil that's talking to you.
You know, it's like, you know, in the cartoon when the eyes go all squirrely.
And then all of a sudden, I'm not me.
And if I've done my work right, all of a sudden I'm saying what's coming out of my mouth is what I prepared.
What's coming out of my pocket is what I prepared.
The way I'm moving is what I'm prepared, and I'm not thinking about it.
It's like watching the great athlete.
When a great athlete makes a behind-the-back pass to the guy at the perfect second, he's not thinking, oh, I've got a cool idea.
I'm going to throw it behind my back.
It'll catch him right as he's in stride.
It's years of practice that have let them know that I know where he is, because where else would he be?
And things that are at first difficult become easy.
And then you can even get better from there and get better from there.
But that's the difference.
People talk about, you know, I love Daniel DeLois too.
I think he's kind of the high watermark of my trade.
And, you know, you hear these stories about what he does.
And people say, well, well, is that what you're supposed to do?
And the thing about when people say method acting is they really don't fundamentally understand what the method is.
The method is an invitation to find out for yourself what will unlock your imagination.
And that might be going hungry for two weeks.
That might be sleeping in a jail cell.
It might be reading 25 books about it.
It might be wearing a weird headpiece.
It's not a rule.
It's about how to unlock what's in here and bring it forward.
Quarterback scrambles, clearly a sign it's time for breakfast burritos.
Turnovers, suddenly dessert at 2 p.m. doesn't sound so crazy.
And wing formations, well, those can only mean buffalo wings, as if they're ever not in play.
Even the goalposts start looking suspiciously like french fries.
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And when you're watching a movie, it does the exact same feeling, like I'm there with you.
Whatever you're experiencing when you are in that zone and you really are that person, I am not just saying, oh, he really is that person.
I'm with you.
I'm with you in the moment.
I feel your anxiety.
The scene in the goddamn, I forgot the name of it.
The film you did with Julia Roberts, the dystopian end of civilization movie.
Because that's Mahersha Ali, Kevin Bacon, and myself, and a very well-written scene.
And those two guys are so easy to act with.
They are so, they are, it is so easy to disappear with them.
We did that scene over and over and over again, 15,000 different ways, and blah, blah, blah.
And it was always, I always loved it.
And, you know, I did, I had a temper tantrum that day on set.
But I, because your body, you're winding your body up in such a way that it's like an emotional currency or something.
You have this thing you're going to spend, but you have to, your body doesn't know it's fake.
And if you do it right, you trick your body into believing that I'm begging for my child's life.
I'm not acting.
I'm begging Kevin Bacon for my child's life.
And he's going to decide whether or not my child gets to live.
Right?
And if you can get that going, shit starts to happen to you, right?
Things you don't plan.
And if Kevin is good, which he is, and Mahersha is good, then they're doing the same thing.
Right?
If he gives me this thing that I need, he's putting his wife at risk.
You're not going to do it.
I don't care about your kid.
You know?
And then Mahersha has got his character in his head.
And then all of a sudden, people are actually behaving.
They're not reciting lines.
They're not.
It's like I did one of my earlier movies with a wolf, right?
It was the best acting teacher I ever had, this wolf.
Because it was this movie called White Fang, right?
Little Disney kids movie, right?
But it was a great teacher.
Because I had to do these scenes with this half-breed wolf.
And If you're the wolf, all right, and we're doing a scene together, and what I'm really thinking about is the camera, you know, the wolf turns around and looks at the camera.
You know, you know, when you meet somebody and you know they're self-conscious, right?
You know, why is she so tense?
You don't, you just, we're non-verbal, we can communicate with each other.
Animals pick up on it instantly.
If I'm actually talking to the dog, the wolf, if I'm actually in, if I'm present with this animal, the animal interacts with me.
I'd just sit there and whittle or something and walk over there, toss rocks for a little bit until he got, you know, it was such a fascinating experience.
But what I always tell my kids who are really interested in my profession or any young actor is like, I call that permission to fail.
I don't give anybody my I don't have permission to fail.
You know, I don't care if you don't like the first AD.
I don't care if you don't like this.
This cannot give them that ability.
I still fail.
I'm not saying that, but I don't want to seed it.
But that takes time.
I spent the first 15 years of my career saying I didn't do a good job because that guy was a jerk, or I didn't do a good job because they changed the script, or I didn't do a good job because of this, that, and the other thing.
And then you see people, like back to our hero thing, then you see people who are really good.
And they don't.
Robert De Niro doesn't give somebody the ability to screw up his workday.
I was reading an article today, and I think it was Psychology Today, about a study that they've done recently on the impact of social media on cognitive function for children, and that it's just fucking nuking their brain.
Nuking.
How do your kids?
I have a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old and a 28-year-old.
I do not put restrictions on my children's use of social media, but we do have discussions about it because I think it is an inexorable part of modern society.
And I think there is a social ostracization that comes from eliminating social media, telling your kid they can't have a phone.
She is just like, see, because she says, let me be, teach me to be responsible for it myself.
Help me do that.
That's what I believe.
And, you know, when we were thinking about what restrictions we're going to do, we went on this walk with this really good friend of mine, Richard Linklader, who's an amazing person.
And they tried to, my daughter's hit him up of what he thinks.
He said, I don't know.
All I know is that the most important thing is to be your own best friend.
And that this is a slight obstacle to it.
That boredom, boredom and sitting still with yourself is a membrane you kind of have to pass through.
And if you can make best friends with yourself, then your best friend is always with you.
And so that's been my solution too, is to say, all right, let's all, there aren't limitations, but let's all sit down and look at, I'll show you how much I looked at it.
How much did you look at it?
How are we doing?
Do you feel, is it helping?
Is it hurting?
Because what you're a thousand percent right about is it's part of the social structure of their lives.
Well, one of my children, well, both of my children, my young children, are very disciplined.
And one of them just opted out, just decided she's not going to get on social media anymore.
And she got this app.
And this is nobody forced her to do this.
She got this app that locks you out.
And it shows you how many days you've been off of Instagram, sort of sort of incentivize you, you know, to stay off of it.
You know, the last time she checked, she had been off like 99 days or something like that.
No Instagram, no nothing.
But it is addictive.
But there's a lot of things in life that are addictive.
And so the question is, like, how addictive is it?
Like, what is calling you to get nothing?
Because that's what you get.
You get nothing.
You get these like tiny dopamine hits, like staring at something for a few seconds, like, that's provocative, or that's crazy.
Like, why is he saying that?
Or why is that happening?
Oh, my God, they're going to die.
You know, like, what you, I have this terrible text thread between me and my friend Tom Segura, where we send each other the absolute worst things that we find online every day.
Like, every day, it's a guy got run over by a train, car accidents, gunshots, South American assassinations.
It's just all every day.
It's all the worst things you could possibly find on the internet.
There's no good in that.
You know, we do that to fuck with each other because it's kind of funny because he's a comedian too, and we just fuck with each other.
It's just like silly.
Like, oh boy, like he sends me things and I send him things.
But for the most part, I get nothing.
It's mostly nothing.
Occasionally, I say it's like as a, I make this excuse, like as a comic, oh, I need to be up on the zeitgeist, I need to be paying attention to what people are paying attention to.
But you kind of get it anyway.
You kind of get it anyway just through life, and it's better that way because then you only get the real significant things.
You don't get the, you don't have to sift through everything.
It's like you have a filter.
Society acts as your filter to get you the most pertinent information.
But I think leading by example with kids is the best way with everything.
My kids are both very disciplined.
They get a lot of things done and they work really hard, which I'm very proud of.
They're also really nice, which I'm also very proud of.
I think that's the hardest fucking thing to do is to just be nice, to be a kind person.
The worst thing for kindness is social media.
Children in particular are so fucking mean to each other on social media.
They're so mean to each other in comments and they talk about how one of their friends is getting bullied and this person is doing this and they're leaving comments on this and from a rival high school and a this and a that.
But I also think that that process of understanding that this there is this bizarre social interaction that's not real, that is a part of life.
And that you have to develop a resilience to this.
Like I think one of the things kids are experiencing now is what I experienced with the first blush of celebrity.
I mean you want to talk about negative comments.
Try being an actor.
Everybody's got an opinion about what a fake you are, what a phony you are.
This sucks about you.
This is dumb.
This is what you're like.
You know, I have lost unbelievable ridiculous amount of hours to my mother will send me a really nice review of something, something positive about me, right?
I'll look at it and my brain goes, what are the comments?
Nasty.
I mean, just the nastiest things.
And you can't believe that some, but I don't want to give it too much time, but I actually think it really makes you stronger to realize, of course, people don't like you.
Half the people every party you went to didn't like you.
Okay?
But they're also not thinking very much about you.
They're thinking about themselves.
And you start to realize that this is just people talking at the barbershop.
People have been gossiping throughout the history of mankind.
Now you can read it if you want, but it has no venom in it.
It's not real.
And the sooner you learn that other people's opinions don't have to affect you, I think the better off you are.
So in that way, it hurt me.
I've seen it happen to actors, especially if you're doing stage.
I'm sure with comics, when you're doing a play and you have to do it every night and you start reading a lot of bad things that people say about you, it is demolishing to your confidence.
You know, I mean, I had this actor friend of mine, we shared a dressing room, and one day he came in, and he was great in the show, and he came in, and his whole energy was dark.
It's like, Yari, I went down the rabbit hole last night.
I just read what people are saying about me on the internet.
And everybody thinks I'm terrible in this play.
And I'm like, they don't like your character.
You know, like, people are not so brilliant.
You know, it's not all geniuses out there chiming in on what a jerk you are at three in the morning.
It's just the opening up your vulnerability to the masses in the most trivial and flippant ways of commenting, which is like leaving a comment on a YouTube video or something like that.
It's just not wise.
It's not good, especially if you actually let it get into your psyche and you take it in as real.
Because we are designed to recognize threats, danger, negativity, because it's important.
Yeah, but it's really usually like the end thing is like something physical.
But Fear Factor came out right after 9-11.
That's when it came out.
And one of the criticisms was, do you really think America needs to be facing fear after we just experienced September 11th terrorist attack?
And I got this question in an interview.
And, you know, my perspective on Fear Factor in the beginning was I'm only doing this because I think it's going to get canceled.
I'm like, I'll get some material out of this.
I'm like, they're going to sick dogs on people and make them eat animal dicks.
I'm in.
I'm like, this is going to get canceled in like fucking three weeks.
And I'm going to have a bit on how fucking stupid this show was.
And it wound up doing like 168 episodes.
It was ridiculous.
And I said, and I got upset in this interview.
I go, that's just ridiculous.
Like they were questioning me whether or not America needs to be scared after 9-11.
I'm like, it's not fucking scary.
And I'm like, what are you talking?
You're making something into something it's not just so that you can write an article.
This is nonsense.
And I go, that kind of criticism is the type of criticism from a person where I'm not interested in your opinion.
I don't think you're a particularly unique thinker.
And you're saying something that's nonsense.
It's nonsense.
It's a stupid show.
I'll tell you it's a stupid show and it's my fucking show.
I don't care.
It's just entertainment.
That's all it is.
And I think the people that write this are writing this in that way because you don't have anything to contribute.
And I met that person at a party.
There was one of those, you know, they have like, if you're on a television show, they have those NBC things where you go and it's like, there's all these different reporters and all the actors from all the shows are there.
And the guy was like, you know, I got to tell you, that really pissed me off.
I go, why?
Because it's accurate?
I go, what pissed you off?
I go, you say horrible, hurtful things about all these different people and the course of their career is dependent upon your opinions to a certain extent.
You could shape other people's narratives about who this actor is, about who this person is.
And you just do it because you don't have anything else to contribute.
And so when I said you don't have anything else to contribute, that hurt your feelings.
That's why it pissed you off.
It didn't piss you off because I wasn't accurate.
And we had this like weird moment, you know, where he was like taking into consideration what I was saying.
And he was like, okay.
And I go, I'm not a bad guy.
I don't think you're a bad guy, but you have to realize there's weight to your words.
And I realized there's weight to my words.
That's why I lashed out like that.
I think this is stupid.
I'll tell you this show's stupid.
It's a stupid show.
We're not making fucking Shakespeare in the park, bro.
We're making people like line a coffin filled with rats.
It's retarded.
But it's okay.
It's okay to have dumb shit.
It's okay to have burgers.
It's okay to have, you know, filet mignon at a fine restaurant.
Like, all these things are okay.
Like, but call it what it is.
If you want to say it's a dumb show, I'm right there with you.
But if you want to say, like, this is bad for America because America just got attacked by, and it's called Fear Factor.
Like, shut up.
Just shut up.
And I just think he didn't like the fact that I was.
Well, I was willing to do what he does to him without fear because I had already checked out of acting.
I did five years on news radio and I decided I'm done acting.
I was like, I don't want to do this anymore.
I only did it for money in the first place.
I never wanted to be an actor.
The only reason why I ever got on a sitcom, I got on a sitcom with zero acting experience.
Zero.
I mean, I had none.
How did it go?
I did MTV Half Hour Comedy Hour, which was this comedy show that used to be on MTV.
I did like a 10-minute set and I got a development deal.
I was like, what?
Like, all of a sudden, they gave me money.
I was poor my whole life.
And then all of a sudden, I had $150,000.
I'm like, this is crazy.
I have money.
Like, it was nuts.
And my manager actually thought I had a gambling problem because I was spending so much money.
And he was like, what are you spending money?
I'm like, eating lobster every night.
I was so dumb.
I thought I was just going to run out and then I'd go back to being poor again.
But all of a sudden, I'm on this show and I'm acting.
And I realized at the end of five years, it was a wonderful job with an amazing, incredible group of talented people, but I don't want to do it again.
It's not my thing.
I don't like it.
So when Fear Factor came up, I'm like, ooh, this is a way to make a lot of money without doing anything that's acting.
Okay, I'll do it.
And so dealing with these people that I'd seen the impact of their words on all the people that I worked with, like we used to sit around, you know, you'd have the table reads, and then people would start reading Variety and they'd start reading the Hollywood Reporter and all those different things, and they would all be super bummed out.
And I would call it the devil's rag.
So I'd go there, oh, you guys are reading the devil's rag again?
I go, fucking throw that away.
It was like the early versions of don't read the comments.
I go, you guys are reading the devil's rag.
Don't fucking read that.
Because then they would be all bummed out.
Like, oh, they think we suck.
Like, no, they suck.
We're trying to make a good sitcom.
Let's just try harder.
The best way to not make a good sitcom is to read shitty things about you.
And this constant process of dealing with other people's opinions and especially negative opinions from people that you don't really like in the first place.
Well, and that's why we're talking the same thing with the internet: figuring out a way to give it no space in your mind.
Because, you know, people are going to do what they're going to do, and you're not in charge of them.
That's what I feel like.
When you absorb too much of that hate and take it on yourself, you're forgetting that somebody writes something hateful about somebody else, whether it's Quentin or whether it's this person or that person or whatever.
Most people hear it and think, wow, I wonder why he said that.
What's wrong with him?
They don't think something.
So a lot of times I might take really personally something that somebody hateful writes about me, but it's not like the world believes it.
And you must know, like with your show, I imagine, I don't really understand really how this works, but there's people who finance it and distribute it.
There's people you have to work with, and they all have opinions.
And like I'm doing this show right now, The Lowdown with FX, right?
It's the first time I've ever done a television show.
And I'm having a great experience with it.
But you have to figure out, you're working with a lot of different people.
You got FX has got their opinions about how the show is, and they're going to distribute it on Hulu, and they're owned by Disney.
And you have to learn how to take criticism.
Go, all right.
And also how to stand up for yourself when you know your aim is true.
And you have to be humble enough to tell the difference because anybody who thinks they're always right is an asshole.
And sometimes you have to stand up for yourself and say, this is the kind of art I want to make.
And I'm living and dying on this.
But actually, what you're saying actually could help me do what I'm doing.
It's the same thing with directors.
If you can't, when you were talking about advice for young people, the first thing that popped in my head is something one of my first directors said to me, which was, he said, I was 21.
I was doing my first, I was making my Broadway debut, and this director said, what have you done?
And I said, well, I did Explorers, you know, when I was a kid, and I did this movie, Dead Poets Society, and I acted in this school play.
I played Tom and Glass Menagerie my senior year.
And this director looked at me and said, so you've done nothing.
And I took offense at that.
I said, I have done some things.
He said, I need you to say, I've done nothing.
I need you to say, I don't know.
And if you can say, I don't know, I can teach you.
And if you can't say, I don't know, then I really can't teach you.
And my 21-year-old ego was just buckling.
I do know what I do.
I do know what I'm doing.
And he said, you've never been on Broadway before.
You've never done Chekhov before.
And you can't say, I don't know what I'm doing.
I said, I can't say that.
I don't know what I'm doing.
See, it's not that hard.
Because if you can say that.
I remember this, like the first time going out surfing once.
Somebody's trying to teach me how to surf.
And I was like 16.
I kept saying, I know how to do it.
I know how to do it.
I didn't know how to do it.
But I couldn't, my ego couldn't buck.
And if you can get to that Zen Tabula Rasa's no place, the beginner's mind.
See, now at 55, I always say I don't know what I'm doing.
It's so easy for me to say it.
It is so easy.
One lifetime is not enough to know what you're doing.
There's so many more rooms.
There's so many more layers.
And so that's the advice I have for young people is to be humble.
And admit because you've done a handful of things doesn't mean you know what you're doing.
And even though I might have even had some success, I didn't know why it was successful.
That's a great, the beginner's mind is a great point to start because even if you're really good at something, like say you're a good piano player and you want to learn how to play tennis, you start from a beginner's mind.
You have to.
And if you go into that tennis lesson going, do you know how fucking good I am at piano?
Like, don't talk to me like that.
Like, no, you don't know how to play tennis.
Let me show you how to play tennis.
Like, everyone is a beginner at a thing they don't know.
And to take on as many things as you don't know as possible to keep that beginner's mind is actually immensely beneficial for your ego, for your objectivity, for everything.
Because with somebody like you who's had a lot of transitions in your life about different career paths and different things that you're, that's always forcing you into a beginner's mind.
And that's, I think I've done the same thing to myself.
You know, like what keeps me excited is like, all right, God, I don't know.
I'm going to write a graphic novel.
I'm going to work with this guy, Greg Ruth.
He's a brilliant illustrator.
I'm going to make a graphic novel.
Now, I've never done that before.
I have no idea how a graphic novel works.
I know I've loved them my whole life, but I've never made one.
Greg has, right?
We work together.
He teaches me Sterling Hard Joe with the show The Lowdown.
Boom.
I've never done a show.
He made reservation dogs.
He's done this.
I don't know this landscape, and I love that feeling because I don't lose all the value of the things I do know about.
It's all there for me.
It's all there for me.
I don't have to announce it over everybody.
It's not going anywhere.
But if I can orient myself into learning, I like making these documentaries because I'm not a professional documentarian.
But what's weird about it is if I do that and I get in this real kind of open space and then I come back to acting, that beginner's mind channel is open and I'm available to learn something from somebody else that maybe I might because one of the things I thought when I was young is I thought there was a right way to be an actor.
And I was obsessed with somebody doing it wrong.
This director is a fucking moron and he's ruining my work.
And then slowly I really realized it's just so obvious there isn't a right way to make art.
There are successful ways and unsuccessful ways, but I wanted everybody to be Peter Weir.
That's what I wanted.
Peter Weir had made that Poet Society and that's what rehearsal is supposed to be like.
That's what the set is supposed to be like.
That's how you're supposed to talk to other people.
I didn't know my mentor was a card-carrying, awesome human being, and I was having unrealistic expectations about other people on their path.
They haven't done all that Peter's done.
They don't know it all.
And I just, it would anger me that they weren't, you know, and then if you can get in a kind of a more open mind, then you can really listen to people and absorb where they're at in their journey.
And you're not going to change them.
You know, you're not this idea that, you know, especially in a film shoot, three minutes, you're not going to change the way they think.
You know, you've got to try to do your thing, lead by example, and try to let them not negatively impact you, but maybe you can be open and learn something from them.
And haven't you ever noticed, like, I took, it happens so often that it's funny.
Like, I take my son out to teach him how to shoot, right?
First skeet thing, you just blast it right out of there.
Second one, blasts it right out of the air.
Right?
You know, you teach somebody to shoot a bow or something.
First air they fly, hits the target.
Then they don't hit the target again.
You know, you start thinking too much.
You know, you hear, I hear, I don't know anything about golf, but I hear the same thing that's true with golf.
Young people are often great actors.
It's adolescence in life that makes it harder to get back to that childlike place.
You know?
And so I think I've even been talking to my wife a lot about I want to start trying to take piano lessons just to do something I've never done because I know it rattles my brain and makes my brain see things differently.
And I believe in that entirely, but I also believe that to master a craft, you have to apprentice three or four.
That it's good for, like, I'm an actor, and I'm going to die an actor, and this is what I'm going to do.
And I have met older actors who are amazing, who I know I'm not as good as.
And it kind of thrills me.
It thrills me.
There's little nuances of conversation that I don't quite understand yet, but I know that they do, and I know that they're right, and I want to understand more deeply.
And I just feel that, I don't know, I lost my train of thought about that.
I know I want to excel at this one craft, but I know that when I direct something, when I write something, if I make a graphic novel, a documentary, I'm learning about things that are adjacent to my specialty.
And by doing that, when I go to set and I'm talking to a writer, I know how hard he worked on the script.
I'm not going to willy-nilly change his lines because I'm not in the mood or I don't like the way my hair looks or something like that.
I'm not going to do that.
I have respect for what he did.
And because I have that respect, I can offer him my thoughts.
And we can probably get involved in a really mutually beneficial conversation.
Because I've directed, I don't look at some director and think, well, like I did when I was younger, he's stopping me.
I'm thinking, I know this guy's sweat this.
I know this guy picked this location for a reason.
I know this guy has a tenuous relationship with a cinematographer.
I know the producers are breathing down his neck.
I know he's got a lot of headaches.
I'm going to help him.
And I'm going to try to find an app.
You know what I mean?
So these ancillary, I do want to have a specialty, but I do think learning the piano might help me be a better actor.
And I would venture to say we're doing pretty well.
Three quarters of the time, we're completely immersed in what we're talking about.
And then my brain, why my computer shut down is I start thinking about this actor that I love, Richard Easton, and I start thinking about how I'm still not as good as he is.
He's not even famous, right?
And then I couldn't remember what I was going to say, right?
And you're talking to me about your kids or something.
And there's no way your mind doesn't drift to something going on in your life.
And mine does too, right?
And so that's what real life is like.
And the actor's job is to figure out the text and have the text be so clear and in there that then you can figure out all the other wavelengths.
You know, when you're watching somebody great, there's all these other wavelengths that are happening.
They have nothing.
It's not that they have nothing to do with the script, but it's like it's like the difference between a sketch and an oil painting.
You know, the script is kind of a beautiful sketch, and the actor's job, director's job, production designer's, we're turning that into an oil painting.
And so anyway, I'm just saying, wouldn't it, if I could put a subtitle under everything we're really thinking while we're talking, how different would it be?
And how much more would I learn about you if I knew what your guy's relationship is really like?
Does he get on your nerves?
Do you hate it that he wears a black cap?
Do you wish he'd wear the red one?
Do you know, you know, you know what I'm saying?
I got there's so much about when I'm in your space, so much I don't know about what's going on today or what you guys are doing later today, or how you cut the show or what's important to you about the show.
Because I'm not thinking about anything else other than what that person's thinking and saying and trying to decipher it and trying to guide the conversation in some sort of an interesting way.
But I forget all kinds of things.
I'll forget important people's phone numbers, birthdays.
I don't remember anything.
So many times I'll ask Jamie a question like, who is that fucking?
What is his fucking name?
And then I can't believe I can't remember.
It's because I'm not there.
I'm lost in what this person is saying.
So I have to sit down and open up my files and go, oh, there's all the information again.
But I'm not there.
So I can't do that.
So I've got to go, let me go back to my desk and I'll open up my files and now I have my information.
That's what it's like for me to have a great role.
My brain disappears into that other psyche.
And I can kind of do some of the normal stuff of life, drive my kids to school and do some things.
But this part of me is floating over here, imagining, was this the right way to, how should I wear the jacket?
Oh, would he drive a car?
What kind of car would he drive?
Is that the right car?
Is that the right, like, you know, and just my imagination, when it's really cooking, takes me away.
My favorite things about it is I don't think about my phone.
I don't think about the emails I didn't return.
I didn't think about whether I forgot so-and-so's birthday.
For this period of time, this job is so important to me that I'm willing to say nothing else matters.
But doing as good as I can in this moment.
Obviously, it's going to matter again when I leave the dressing room and when I do this.
Obviously, I'm trying to be a good adult and father and husband and citizen and all that stuff.
But it gives me a space where everything else can disappear.
Everything else.
And that's what's so fun about a big ensemble movie.
Like, people may like the movie or not like the movie, but I did this remake of Magnificent Seven, right?
And when you have a big cast and everybody's in period costume, you know, and everybody's on their horse and your jacket's from 1876 and their shirt is from, you know, from the Civil War or something like that.
And it's all real and there's these old taverns built and there's dogs on the set and horses peeing and you know what?
And, you know, and I've got to worry about how many bullets I have left in my thing.
And, you know, and it's, it's back to hypnosis.
And it's a wonderful relaxation.
And that's the strange thing about it is it's like, you know, when you're a kid and you first look at the stars or the ocean or something, and you feel powerfully your own insignificance.
And your intellectual brain would think that that would feel bad.
Oh, if somebody told you, hey, you're insignificant, that feels bad.
Yeah, and I think the ultimate in the moment for a person that doesn't have a craft or a thing is staring at the stars because you realize you are a part of everything.
And you are in this infinite soup of existence that all of your troubles and your stuff, it seems so insignificant in comparison to the vastness of what's in front of you.
When I was younger, when my oldest daughter was, I think she was only like five or six, we went to the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.
And I don't know if you've ever been there, it's on the Bag Island.
But they told us, it's like an hour and a half drive.
They told us when you're driving up there, go, you know, you're going to go to the top and hopefully there won't be any clouds so you get a clear vision of the sky.
So as we're driving up, there's all these fucking clouds.
I'm like, oh, this sucks.
It's going to suck.
We're driving all this.
We're not going to see any stars.
We drive through the clouds because it's really high.
And you get up to the top and you're above the clouds.
And we got out of the car and my fucking jaw dropped.
It was nuts.
It was the craziest image.
And I've been there three times since, never recreated it.
There's always been cloud cover that's higher up.
I just caught it the first time I went there at the absolute perfect.
It changed my life.
It changed my perspective on the universe itself because it felt like I was, it felt psychedelic.
It felt like I was in a spaceship, like a convertible spaceship, and I was looking through the windshield and we were flying through the cosmos and there was an impossible amount of stars in the sky.
There wasn't a spot in the sky that wasn't filled with stars.
I was like, I told the guy, I said, look, I'm not going to drink.
I got it.
Like, the stuntmen are hanging in there.
All the other actors are hanging out in there.
And I had nothing to do because I couldn't go in the one freaking bar, right?
And for the first three months I was there, it was always dark, right?
And then the second three months, it was always light.
And it was just, but anyway, the point is, I went on this long walk and I saw the Aurora Borealis by myself, you know, and I'd see it night after night.
I think we're being robbed of that because of cities.
Light pollution has robbed us of what I think all of our ancestors always inherently observed.
When nighttime came around, everybody realized, well, you're a part of the infinite cosmos and there's magic to the universe, which is why there were so many people, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, that had these whimsical tales and these ideas of the importance of life and existence when they're in the most brutal moments of history.
They're in the most brutal moments of life, life or death, hunter-gatherers, warring tribes.
But yet at night, you're presented with this impossible majesty of the cosmos above your head every night.
Now, today, we have fucking social media.
This is your sun.
This is your star.
You're staring at a stupid fucking screen.
And when you look up, you just see nothing but blackness because there's all these city skyscrapers and all these tricks.
Exactly.
It's blinded out the one thing that is like one of the most important, humbling, like grounding experiences, peering at the cosmos.
It's so hard to be in a bad mood when you're looking at the stars.
It's so hard to be in a bad mood when you're riding a bicycle and you feel the wind.
It's just, it's funny.
It's such a simple little thing, a stupid little invention, this bicycle.
But you get in, you ride around.
It's very hard to stay in a bad mood if you spend two hours on a bicycle.
And there's so many things like that that we rob ourselves of.
You know, I don't know.
Even like I find when I'm in nature, exercise, when I run outside and I'm running through the trees and I see a hawk and I see the wind blowing through and I pass a farm with sheep and I, it's like I come back from a long run high and I feel like I like myself.
And I was going to bring that up earlier when you were talking about immersing yourself in a role and preparing for a thing.
It's one of the more romantic things to me about fighting.
When I know that, like when like this past weekend, there was a big UFC.
When a fighter goes into a camp, they go off somewhere.
They leave their family behind, often for like two months at a time.
And they just completely immerse themselves in preparation for this one thing that's going to happen.
And every little thing that distracts you robs you away from the potential of that one possible majestic performance, that one career-defining performance, which they're all chasing after.
And for a championship-level fighter, it's like the immense pressure.
And then this thing, this you call it romantic because it is kind of romantic.
The way that you're even talking about trying to do your interviews, you're trying to do your comedy.
You're trying to be insane.
But to have something so, I mean, I envy that when I read about fighters and the dedication.
I really kind of long for that experience.
That idea of going away.
And I think there's something about I've always, I don't know if you think this, but whenever I pass by a monastery, a convent or something, these people who are dedicated to their spiritual calling so completely that they've isolated out all the noise of life.
Well, it makes me think about earlier in our conversation when I was talking about, oh, you know, when I think about when I was young and I'd be really nervous and pretending I wasn't nervous and that was the problem.
And that now said to you, I still experience it.
I just know what to do.
You remember like that when you were talking like that?
What I was, what I know what to do is not to pretend that I'm not nervous.
If you can say that, the closer you get to game moment, now you're not pretending.
And you realize, oh, for me, it's just a scene.
It's just a play.
It's just a night.
I can handle it.
This is, you remember that Jaguar Paul in apocalypto when he has that moment, he's running through the woods and he's so afraid and he realizes, this is my forest.
You know, he's like, I don't have to be afraid in my forest.
One of the things about in the rooms that I've been in with a lot of money, compared to the rooms I've been in where there isn't a lot of money, if you compare the laughter.
I don't relate to it because that's what led me to that question.
I'm like, what am I chasing?
You know what I'm chasing?
What I said earlier, like, the last thing I shot, we had a couple moments of grace.
You know, just where, like, I can tell the crew's losing their lunch and everybody's so happy with the take that we got and it's kind of moving and oh, it was perfect.
And the light came through the window at the right time.
And then Peter Dinklich said this hysterical thing and he wasn't supposed to say it, but it worked out perfect because then the other actress, then she responded in that way.
And then my hat fell off and everybody's, and it's just, it's high.
And I drive home and I want to tell everybody and I can't wait for the world to see it.
You know, I am chasing that, like, could that happen again?
And it happens to me all the time, and it bothers me that what people think is pretentious and what people, if I say to you, you know, I really want to make $100 million.
If you came home today and she had made this crazy collage and it was combining pictures of her friends from high school and this beautiful watercolor that she did around it and she sprinkled glue on it and dropped sparkles on it and put it in a weird wood frame that her mother had given her, that she like, and she said, isn't it beautiful, dad?
You would you ever say that's pretentious?
Of course not, of course not.
Yeah, but the goal, what i've, when somebody says the word art to me, I don't hear pretentious, I hear the solar system.
Yeah, I hear like human creativity inside of us man, it is inside me and it's inside you.
And when I see a great movie, or when I hear Jimi Hendrix rip a killer solo yeah, then my whole body vibrates.
Oh hey, we're alive.
Yes, you know, when Johnny Cash comes out with a sound you've never heard before, when it's a great rap song, you're like I got to hear that again.
Yeah, I feel my heartbeat with that.
That's art.
It's not pretentious, it's it's, it's real and and so I I feel that way very strongly and that makes me want to go to set and that makes me not care whether the movie makes a billion dollars.
It makes two cents.
There's a great one of the great old English actor Paul Schofield.
I I i'm gonna destroy this quote, but it was in his obituary and he was in this great movie when I was a kid Man For All Seasons and he was in Redford's quiz show and he was a great English actor and when he died in his obituary there was an interview with him.
He said, you were performing King Lear at your local church.
At the end, why weren't you doing it on the West End?
You know, because you were.
You were healthy enough.
They were asking, why are you doing?
He was doing a play at a local church in your home.
He said, I really like walking to work and I realized that I really have always only performed for whoever it was that made me.
And I can do that anywhere.
I can do it on Broadway, I can do it in a Robert Redford movie and I can do it in my local theater.
It's the same action and it's taken me a lifetime to realize that it doesn't.
I just love to do it and he's like, and i'd like to walk to work.
So i'm not going to West End and and I thought I love this guy.
And that's the thing where we're talking about boxing or fighting or acting or whatever.
The thing about the 100% focus is it's kind of by shedding everything, there's a discipline to that, about seeing all the little details.
I find, for example, in acting, they always talk about this.
Is he a good listener?
Like one of the things, like, are you responding naturally like a human being?
Can you listen?
And in the art of teaching myself about acting, about how to be present with my scene partner, I've learned how to be present with you, with my kids, when I'm at a baseball game with my friends.
It actually, like, it's meaning I'm taking the same idea that if you train to do a fight well and you really feel what excellence at that level is like, you can feel it in other things.
It can translate.
You know what sloppy thinking is.
If you've been relaxed while you're doing something hard, you know what it's like when you're tense because you're not having that feeling that you had in that fight where you were really great.
That's the same with my I've done performances where it goes up all by itself.
And it's an amazing feeling.
A lot of work and preparation has to go into that feeling of disappearing.
But now I know when it's not happening.
And it doesn't mean I can make it happen, but at least an awareness that it's not happening is a great starting place to go.
I mean, it's like, yes, the short answer to your question is, it was we would be doing ride-arounds, you know, in the back of these cop cars watching these arrests or talking to some of these people who really lived the life that we were doing.
And they would say something really funny, you know.
And I would just see Denzel glance at me and I realized, oh, that just went in the computer.
And then it would come out, you know, in a scene two months later.
That line that that guy said, exactly, it would come out.
It was a great script.
I don't want to.
David Ayr wrote the script.
It's a phenomenal script.
I mean, when I read that script, I wanted that part so badly.
Denzel's one of my favorite actors.
He is probably my favorite actor.
I think, you know, Malcolm X and Raging Bull are two as towering.
Maybe Nicholson and one flew the cuckoo's nest, like live as the three great performances of my lifetime.
But he's always listening, always listening, talking, asking, thinking, curious, so present, so commanding.
And if you take responsibility for your own work, you can have a great experience.
And I had been, when people say improvised, they think, oh, just some magic lightning bolt happened.
It's months of work.
It was improvised.
He's just supposed to yell, fuck you, or something as I'm walking away.
And this monologue flew out of his mouth.
You know, y'all going to be playing for the Pelican Bay all-stars.
This is my neighborhood.
You all just live here.
King Kong ain't got nothing on me.
Just all this stuff.
And it was, it was the last day of shooting, or third to last day or something.
And it was all his prep.
Just, he's just, this is, here's a line that didn't make the movie.
Here's another line that didn't make the movie.
Here's another thing I wanted to say.
Here's another thing.
And he just started throwing them all out there.
And I shit you not, man.
The shots, it's on me.
I'm walking out of the, you know, walking away from me, screaming all this stuff.
And that's when I say I'm chasing a feeling.
Like, that's one of the, I mean, to just be there that day, you know, to watch a great, somebody's working on a different level than everybody else.
You know, he's, he, you know, he makes all of us look like we're mastering checkers, you know, and he's, but to be there and be part of the magic.
And I knew where I'd heard him audition some of those lines other places.
You know, we'd run lines together and he'd try this thing.
He was, he was amazing.
Amazing.
That's what I mean by the power of his imagination.
He was Alonso.
And anything that he would pick up or hear would go into the computer.
And then he would look for the ways that it could help the script.
Look for ways, you know, he wasn't, you know, he wasn't putting, selfishly tearing the sail up to make it about him.
He was always looking to help.
I even remember he came to the set the day, I have the scene that he's not in with the Cholo gang, you know, and they're playing cards and, you know, you read your shit pushed in, that scene, you know, where they put me in the bathtub.