I was on holiday recently and I came home to find that one of the papers here had ‘bikini’d’ me on the beach. I was wearing a grossly unflattering costume and they had published photographs of me taken from behind. I looked dreadful. I went into our local newsagent and bought up every copy.
Even when the attention focused on me is positive, I am uncomfortable being looked at by a lot of people – it’s just not my natural state of being.
I watch a lot of sport on television. I only watch certain sports, and I only watch them live – I don’t think I’ve ever been able to watch a replay of a match or game of which the result was already decided. I feel bound to cheat and look up what can be looked up.
Every serious deflation I’ve looked at is preceded by an asset bubble, and then it bursts.
I never actually got noticed on the street for ‘Harry Potter.’ I did it at such a young age, when I was going through puberty and changing up my hair and how I looked.
According to one critic, my works looked like scraped billboards. I went to look at the billboards and decided that more billboards should be scraped.
I feel as though I have lived many lives, experienced the heights and depths of each and like the waves of the ocean, never known rest. Throughout the years, I have looked always for the unusual, for the wonderful, for the mysteries at the heart of life.
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
Five minutes before I went on, I looked at my manager and said, I’m going to get booed. I know it’s going to happen. And you’re responsible because you put me on here. It was horrible. I’ve never been more hurt in my entire life.
I looked back on the roaring Twenties, with its jazz, ‘Great Gatsby’ and the pre-Code films as a party I had somehow managed to miss.
I had a wife and children. I was mostly working in painting and decorating and then taking the occasional acting job as they came along. At that stage in your life you have to think about your priorities. It looked like I was going to have to take the building more seriously and give up acting.
I once did a role which I couldn’t rehearse in my street clothes, I had to have the character’s costume on before I could rehearse it. I just couldn’t think as the character unless I looked like him, or I knew that I looked like him.
I’ve never looked at my career in terms of, What haven’t I done that I want to do? I just generally find a story that I think is a good one and go to work.
At one point, I kind of looked in the mirror and said, ‘You know, you’re a mom. You’re a wife. People count on you; you can’t go off the deep end into this kind of crazy musical swirl.’
I only really discovered modelling in August 2014 when I went to the Royal Queensland Show in Brisbane and watched a fashion parade. At that moment, I decided it looked like an awesome thing to do. Before then, my spare time was competing at Special Olympics, dancing, and acting.
In the end, so much of what I wanted to do was to have a body of work that exhaustively looked at black American notions of masculinity: how we look at black men – how they’re perceived in public and private spaces – and to really examine that, going from every possible angle.
I have admired Taufik Hidayat for being exceptionally talented and Hendrawan for being a great player only because of his hard work and dedication. I have always looked up to them as players.
In awe, I watched the waxing moon ride across the zenith of the heavens like an ambered chariot towards the ebony void of infinite space wherein the tethered belts of Jupiter and Mars hang, for ever festooned in their orbital majesty. And as I looked at all this I thought… I must put a roof on this toilet.
I looked up my family tree and found out I was the sap.
Umpires are necessary evils. That’s just the nature of the beast. For years, people have looked on umpiring as a job they could get any postman to do.
At a certain point he was very popular, from THE RAVEN. He was never fully appreciated, never made the money, and you know he was looked upon with admiration by some people, but also as an oddball. But that was his point.
As a child, I was tortured because my mother was a brilliant seamstress who made most of my clothes. I was despised by the children at school because I looked like I was going to an opening every day. We weren’t wealthy at all; we lived in a row house in Philadelphia.
When I got to 40 or so… I had the sense when I looked back over my life I would actually see a mess of decisions, a few of which I had thought about, some of which I had sort of stumbled on, and many that I had no control over whatsoever.
I would be surprised though if I don’t get unbelievable critical acclaim for ‘Dirty Picture’ and a national award for my actress, Vidya Balan. The movie has one of the most well-written scripts I have come across, and a lot of youngsters in my office have looked at it with great admiration.
If I hadn’t left South Africa, I felt I was at risk of being pigeonholed. I looked around and saw actors who, 10 to 15 years into their careers, were still playing stereotypical Afrikaans characters, stereotyped Indian characters. That was not something that I wanted for myself.
After I grew some facial hair, I looked a bit older, and I guess that’s what the modeling world wanted because I started booking more luxury brands.
All the time, even before we had mainstreamed, it was like we were never really Christians because of the way we looked. Or, you know, we were never Christian enough, or we’re too Christian at times. You can’t please people.
Well, I’ve never looked upon myself as being a beauty, per se.
People always want you to look pretty. I would like to live in the Midwest in a small town and never put makeup on. But they won’t let you do that. Once I went through a period when I did do that, wore no makeup, wore my hair any which way, and people looked at me like I was a bum.
I’d read about NBA players in magazines when I was growing up in Congo, but I had never actually seen what NBA basketball looked like because we didn’t have access to a satellite for TV.
Everything always looked better in black and white. Everything always looked as if it were the first time; there’s always more people in a black and white photograph. It just makes it seem that there were more people at a gig, more people at a football match, than with colour photography. Everything looks more exciting.
Once in high school, I completely over plucked my left eyebrow all the way up to where you’re not supposed to. I had no idea what I was doing and it looked terrible! My mom was like ‘What did you do to yourself?’ I was so embarrassed.
When I was really little, I was on a Pop Warner squad. I did it for a year. My dad was a Pop Warner football coach. I did it because my best friend was also on this cheer squad, and of course I looked up to my sister who was a cheerleader, so I wanted to cheer.
I know that people think I’m sexy and I am looked at as that. It is cool with me. It’s wonderful to have sexy appeal. If you embrace it, it can be a very beautiful thing.
I look fine. I’ve had no surgery apart from an operation I had decades ago to remove the fat under my eyes. My mum looked 30 when she was 60, so I guess I owe it all to genes and hair dye.
I was writing a third novel when my kids arrived. And I looked at that book about whether these two people would get together, and I thought, ‘I don’t care! I’ve got kids!’
It is not enough to be well-intentioned; one must strive to put those intentions into action in a capable way. One must consider the effect his actions will have on others. Looked at like this, to persist in ignorance is itself dishonorable.
Throughout out history, when people have looked for new ways to solve their problems, and to uphold the principles of this nation, many times they have turned to political parties. They have often turned to the Democratic Party.
When I went into the computer shop to change my last laptop, the 19-year-old kid behind the counter looked at my six-year-old model and described it as ‘vintage.’ ‘Vintage?’ I wanted to scream. ‘Son, I’ve got shirts older than you! I own underpants that have seen more of the world!’
A lot of people try to paint this child actor stigma, but I always looked at it as a great opportunity.
I have photographs taken of me at the time I was addicted, and thought I looked good. I see them today and realize my eyes were dead.
I always loved Belle from ‘Beauty and the Beast’. I always thought I looked like her, so I dressed like her for every Halloween.
When we were getting married the Hindu way in Arrah, we had an old guest who asked my wife what her ‘good name’ was. I think she’d heard that I had married a Muslim. When my wife said, ‘Mona Ahmed Ali,’ the lady looked at me and exclaimed, ‘Oh, so you’ve married a terrorist.’
I listened to a clip someone had put up of me singing ‘I Am What I Am’ in the musical ‘La Cage aux Folles.’ I thought I was absolutely dreadful. It’s like when you see photos of yourself at parties – at the time you thought you looked so cool and glamorous but you just look a bit drunk.
Starting at about, I guess, forever, I’ve always looked forward to getting older. When I was 14, I couldn’t wait to be 16 and get a driver’s license.
I was bullied every day at school because I carried a briefcase. I could have left it at home. But I thought it looked great! I didn’t understand why anyone else didn’t think so.
