After the second and final time that I got hugely fat in my life and when I lost that weight six or seven years ago, I pretty much decided that I was going to stay in decent shape for the rest of my life.
— J. K. Simmons
I read a lot of scripts, and there's a lot of good writing and a lot of OK writing and a lot of crappy writing. And even with the really good writing, it doesn't necessarily speak to me.
Screaming is hard after a while.
I'm just first of all looking for a part that's well written and speaks to me.
If I was doing a musical, I would never listen to the cast album, because I wanted to do my version of something.
On 'Oz' one day, I got a chunk of a camera embedded in my head, and I was passed out on the floor geysering blood while the set medic stood over me, freaking out. No help whatsoever. I ended up going to the ER and getting nine stitches in my head - real Frankenstein stitches.
Whether you need to like a character, I don't think that's necessary in order to portray him.
I would like to find, or I would like a part to come to me that is like the part that Dennis Franz was fortunate to be able to play on 'NYPD Blue,' a sort of similar-looking actor to me, a generic, bald white guy who you would often think of as playing the authority figure. But he was the disgruntled middle-man. That would be a fun character.
Being evil is easy.
I was studying music in college. I was singing, I was doing operas and Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and then I was offered a job as the music director of the Bigfork Summer Playhouse, in Bigfork, Montana.
Most of my friends - when I was five, six, seven years old - their dads were working in an auto plant in Detroit until 5:30, and then they were sat in rush hour. They weren't around as much. My dad finished at three o'clock, so he was just around more.
The best complement I ever got from the public or producers or directors is that I just totally blend in and become the character and they don't notice me and that the play happens or the movie happens or the TV show happens.
People evolve and it's important to not stop evolving just because you've reached 'adulthood.'
I actually have a degree in music and was aware that music was a tool used in therapy. I didn't realize how far it had come since I was in college in the mid-seventies.
Almost every character I've ever played - and sometimes this is very conscious and sometimes it's not - I need to find what they love.
I have a degree in music, yeah, from the University of Montana. I studied voice and composition and conducting and all that.
I just saw 'Men, Women & Children' last night, and it's a devastating movie in a lot of ways, but it's so well done, so well acted.
Sometimes I read a really good script, and I just know that it's not a good fit.
My full name's Jonathan Kimble, but my parents didn't want to call me either. So for a while, I went by Kim, which is a name for a girl or a Korean person.
Seriously, who doesn't want to slap a 27-year-old movie star?
I do think you need to understand a character's motivation and perspective.
I've had a contemptuous relationship with authority throughout my life. I found myself at odds with authority, and I'm disdainful of blind authority.
Fortunately, for the first 20 years in my career, I didn't have any other responsibilities outside of myself. I didn't have a wife and kids, so I could afford to sort of barely scrape by, to do theater.
I was in New York. I had been doing theater for many years, and then I got hired to a little part - they weren't calling it an extra, but I didn't have lines. It was a 'featured' part.
We're raising a generation of kids who are being overly praised for incredibly minor accomplishments. I think it's counter-productive.
I was not a giant comic book fan as a kid, but to the extent that I did read comics, Spider-Man was always my favorite guy.
I like to act. Every other aspect of show business I find uninteresting.
When I go back to New York all these years later, I'll walk down Seventh Avenue, and I'll hear, 'Yo, Oz!' In New York, I get recognized for that all the time.
I'm just glad to be able to work.
Everybody does their homework, and we all come together and just knock it out. There are adjustments to make, and if you have actors who are collaborators and who really know how to listen and be in the scene together, than it works out beautifully.
My understanding, from what I've learned so far about Commissioner Gordon, is that he's the older guy with the mustache who relates with our hero in a certain way.
Things heal. Bad stuff happens, but you go on. Life takes care of it.
I had many, many mentors that I worked with. Music teachers, choir directors, directors in summer stock or in regional theater. You know, people I was able to work with repeatedly and learn from who were really sort of appropriate people for me to work with at a given time in my development as an actor.
If the awards buzz is happening, and it's coming from critics and people in the business and all of that, that's only more good news.
I am who I am. I have a low voice, and I look like somebody's dad or boss or a police chief, and those roles come my way.
When I got out of college, I moved to Seattle because it was the nearest big city and still didn't know if I wanted to be a composer, conductor, singer, actor. I just got day jobs and auditioned and took what came, and the theater doors were the ones opening the most.
I went from being a jock to a hippie. It was a very clear-cut decision. I had to be one or the other. I had to forsake that other aspect of myself. Or thought that I had to, which is regrettable. Quickly, I was back in the pine trees with the hippies, listening to my Jimi Hendrix and my Janis Joplin and turning on, tuning in, and dropping out.
There's a kind of numbness, a sameness, a lack of motivation in 'good job' culture.
I'm not a fan of any genre but am a fan of movies that are intelligent and/or funny. That goes across all genres: a horror movie, a zombie movie, alien invaders, chick flick, or raunchy comedy. If it's well done, I'm a fan.
I never listened to the Grateful Dead as a teen; the only exposure I got was what came through the walls when my sister was listening to them.
