“My first job on Broadway was The Changing Room in 1973, and it all took place in the locker room of a rugby team. And I had a long scene stark naked onstage. I won a Tony award for that, so I look for every opportunity to take my clothes off ever since. People don’t always necessarily want me to, of course.” —John Lithgow on his award-winning talent [LAT]
“I suppose I was always creative. I did start twenty novels, and then went, ‘Ah, too hard,’ and went to the bar.” —Ricky Gervais on his lazy, pre-Office self [Guardian UK]
“There’s a sort of double life that I have as far as acting. I love making films like Creation about Charles Darwin, but … [t]he truth is when I was a kid my mom gave me a set of holsters, two holsters and guns and a cowboy hat. I ran around shooting things. And I suddenly thought, ‘Well, it’d be really nice approaching 40 to have a ball doing that.’”—Paul Bettany [Female First]
“Nobody has ever loaned me money. I mean, I was going to die on a few occasions. Johnny Depp gave me CPR on one. That’s as close as I ever got. I was watching that movie where he plays Dillinger, and I was like, ‘Mother fucker, I never had myself any JD except CPR.’”—Courtney Love [Contact Music]
“It was my first acting school. I would pretend to be doing my homework, but I was really observing the women. I found their behavior mesmerizing — what they were hiding, how they left feeling a little different after they’d been helped to become a little more like whom they wanted to look like. They treated the place a little bit like a psychologist’s office. They would share all their secrets.” —Penélope Cruz on her mother’s hair salon [VF]
“I don’t like to look at Penélope directly. It is too overwhelming.” —Woody Allen [VF]
“Filming action and stunts is a really challenging thing because there is so much to think about, it’s like conducting a symphony.” —Drew Barrymore on filming Whip It! [Showbiz Spy]