My mother's a Peruvian Indian from Lima who raised me and my four brothers and sisters as a single mom.
— Benjamin Bratt
I think a lot of us often don't express how we really feel because we're afraid of what others might think of us. So we secretly admire people who could care less. They do things that we don't allow ourselves to do.
I've always said that Miguel Pinero's story is a quintessential American tale. An immigrant who comes to this country, is immediately marginalized to the lowest economic level and persecuted because of his skin color and, in spite of all the obstacles put in his way, he becomes a huge popular success.
I've played a lot of cop parts.
I drove a blue and yellow Super Shuttle van for two 10-hour shifts on the weekend after a week at ACT of 10 A.M.-10 P.M. I wasn't surviving too much.
I've always approached acting from a very workmanlike perspective.
I love doing voiceover work.
I think all actors are on the constant search for a real challenge just to keep things interesting.
I'm not an aristocrat. I have no idea what that is.
I count it as a major victory to not only be on a series that's had a full season run, but to actually be on one that's gotten picked up for a second season.
Well, for me, the real excitement of doing physical things in films, whether you're talking about a fight scene or a stunt sequence or even a love scene, for that matter, is by necessity it has to be choreographed very much like a dance. That being said, you have to rehearse it over and over again and find a mathematical precision.
Your job as an actor is to stay employed.
I've made a career over the last seventeen years of mostly playing men in uniform, especially cops. The one thing for an actor that is death, is if you're bored. The boredom will show in your work.
I find myself enjoying a deeper love than I ever imagined was possible in the form of my daughter and certainly in the union with my wife. It makes everything else, including work, which is one of the things I'm most passionate about, pale by comparison.
As far as I know, you only get one shot at this life. It only goes round once and time is precious. When I'm not working, you'd better spend that time with someone important.
My brother Peter was always the life of the party, and so the running joke for the first 12 years of my life was he was Pete, and I was 'Re-Pete.'
I'm used to the fact that the world views movie actors as personalities. I'm in the extremely fortunate position of making a living at something I'm passionate about. It's all about choices. By the nature of what I do, I make a choice. I invite them in.
Sometimes a little comfort food can go a long way.
I've played 'Latin-looking spiv, third from the right' so many times I can't count.
I've never given a bad audition in my life.
The funny thing as an actor is that you show up on the set, and your key goal really is to make the scenes that you're involved in honest and real. You're not concerned with the technical aspect of things, and then you sit in the movie theater, and you watch it with everyone else, you realize that, 'Man, this is pretty exciting.'
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.
Fraternity life, for me, really was about cheap rent and three square.
I think there's a settled quality, there's a gravitas that comes with aging and with being a parent because you certainly come to recognize that there's nothing else that takes greater priority than raising your children.
Building a little bonfire at night on the beach and lying on a blanket with my wife under the stars is not only sexy, it's romantic.
The one thing for an actor that is complete death is if you're bored, because that boredom will show in your work.
I have no particular career agenda.
I'm oftentimes called away from my family... it's rather hard for me to be away from them. We're very close.
I don't really consider myself to be an actor of any particular style. My aim with every role I undertake is to be truthful and honest in that particular portrayal. I don't have a particular methodology from any one school of thought or training.
The first car I ever owned was an Italian sports car, a convertible, and I've kind of owned everything under the sun since then.
We live in a society that, for the most part, is morally and spiritually bankrupt. Our culture is a culture of consumerism. How sustainable is that?
I used to work in Starbucks.
I've had a terrible career.
It's an amazing blessing to do something you love.
My brother and I used to collect comic books in San Francisco.
I find that most of us actors can't stand ourselves in any form.
I think film and television actually is a lot harder. Acting onstage is physically more arduous, but to get to emotional truth within a scene, it's much tougher to do it on film.
My sense of personal strength has always come from my family.
I wasn't terribly aware of Catwoman. She was a DC comics character and as a kid, I wasn't terribly fond of the DC comics characters. I was a Marvel boy.
Film and television essentially feel the same when you're doing it, because it's the same technical approach.
The whole thing about acting, the draw for me, is the opportunity to do things you don't get to do in real life.
I have always been of the mind that good work is good work, whether performed on stage, on television or in film and, like any reasonable actor, I keep my options open.
I come from a large family so you can count on the fact that I'm going to have more kids.
