I won an Academy Award for ‘The Cider House Rules,’ playing an American.
I was 18, at art school, and saw this cute boy playing banjo. I was obsessed. I taught myself how to play. I listened to a lot of country and just messed around. The second song I wrote on the banjo was ‘Good to Be a Man.’ That what’s got me signed.
The most special Slam is Wimbledon, of course. But where I feel the best is Melbourne. And you’re happy that you’re playing. When you get to the middle of the season, everything is week after week, and it’s all routine. But when it’s Melbourne in January, you are fresh and you want to play. It’s nice.
I’m not going to complain about playing a cop, there’s a cop in every country town in this place. Policing the world and the community is a difficult job, because you get it wrong some times. I couldn’t do it for real.
I gave up lots of things I love doing: writing, and business, and playing the piano and so on.
When I was playing in the Ajax youth teams – when I was, say, 14, 15 – you started to get all those international youth tournaments. All those English teams came. Well, the English were much further than we were.
When I work alone, and I’m in my studio, and I’m playing a lot of the stuff myself, I think the style of it becomes something a little different.
When you’re picking a basketball team, you’ll take the brother over the guy with the yarmulke. Why? Because you’re playing the odds.
Playing sick. That is so hard to do. It has to be a total mental challenge, as well as the physical challenge.
There are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.
When was the last time you spent a quiet moment just doing nothing – just sitting and looking at the sea, or watching the wind blowing the tree limbs, or waves rippling on a pond, a flickering candle or children playing in the park?
The conscious mind may be compared to a fountain playing in the sun and falling back into the great subterranean pool of subconscious from which it rises.
The old-timers schooled me good. They brainwashed me to respect music, whether we were playing rockabilly or blues or rock and roll.
As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.
Earliest musical memory is probably being scared stiff with my family’s band as a youngster on stage playing the conga drums.
The more games you play and are playing well consistently, you get more confident.
If I had to come back in life, I’d come back as a dolphin… they’re always smiling; they’re always playing.
What I’ve learned how to do as I’ve gotten older is to take all of the information that I have, and push it aside, and try to distill each song into an emotional theme. The hardest thing that I’ve ever had to learn how to do in playing music is use the sound of my instrument to create an emotional effect.
When playing big festivals, I tend to play big, over the top techno tracks, like hands in the air songs that make sense being played in front of 30,000 people. I steer away from subtlety in the interests of big bombastic dance music.
I’ve been working since I was 17, when I started playing for Fluminense, which helped me a lot, I grew a lot there and even more at Real Madrid.
I remember the reason why did I start my golf. We had a four day game I was playing for Trinidad against the Leeward Islands. They had in their ranks Winston Benjamin, Curtly Ambrose and Kenneth Benjamin. To add to it, the track was a green top. The four day game lasted two days, so I had two days to play golf.
The minute I stop singing orally, I start to sing by playing Lucille.
When I’m playing football I’m switched off to everything else – it frees my mind.
When I started playing cricket, I knew that my physique is not at all like a typical fast bowler. My body language is also different, and I am not aggressive by nature; thus, my focus was always on my skills.
I’m an actor and this is a role I’m playing. But people can get wacky.
Being an actor: that’s a pretty big net. That’s a big playing field. The Screen Actors’ Guild is filled with many, many, many, many people and vastly different careers.
I much prefer playing in the centre of the park; that’s where I feel comfortable.
I don’t think about goals and records. Competition is what keeps me playing.
Success in life comes not from holding a good hand, but in playing a poor hand well.
People regularly practice playing a sport like golf or basketball – but few people think about ‘practicing being successful.’ I had practiced meeting the Queen of England – what I would wear, how I would stand, the handshake – so when I did meet her, I was comfortable – for I had practiced the moment for years.
My favorite part about being a father is playing toys with them, or watching movies with them, really just playing around with them. They bring a lot of joy in to my life, even when I’m having a bad day. Just to come home and see them smiling brings so much joy to my life.
Dude, I love playing drums, and I love being on stage, and I love recording. It’s my life… it’s been my life, all my life, and I don’t think it could ever become boring for me.
I played soccer for nine years, so I took that route instead of singing. I played on the outside team as well as in school, so I was always playing soccer. It wasn’t until I moved back to London that I really, like, started investing in music again and realized, OK, yeah, this is definitely what I want to do.
I wanted to play drums because I fell in love with the glitter and the lights, but it wasn’t about adulation. It was being up there playing.
It was a normal childhood, like the childhoods of all children my age: going to school, playing in the street with friends, spending time at home with my family.
The most memorable moment was playing drums with Bob Dylan.
Perfectionism becomes a badge of honor with you playing the part of the suffering hero.
I got into Nirvana, and it was my sort of awakening into the idea that music could be like rough and crazy and local. And so I started to realize that there were bands playing in my town, Anacortes.
Milestones have never really meant a lot. They probably will mean more when I’ve finished playing and actually reflect on what I have achieved.
We are well aware of the task ahead of us in what will be a very difficult match but which we all dream of playing.
