I only want to do what I really want to do; otherwise, I'm content to sit here and play my guitar all day.
I never hated hip-hop. It became the new rock and roll. It became the biggest thing that Africans have ever done in the history of the Americas. Hip-hop put more black Americans on than anything before it. It fed more people. It allowed them to diversify into clothing lines and billion-dollar headphone companies.
I think I have enough of a sense to know what works for me and what doesn't, without going into some big thing and analyzing what I do. I'm in a position that allows me to do what I want to do, and I do it.
I started out as an impressionist and that's all about observing - how people move, their voice quality, their attitudes and quirks.
In the original script, my character was a basketball player rather than a boxer. I didn't think I could pull that off. I'm a little short to be a basketball player!
I had a band before I did standup - I've always done music. I got known for being funny, and that's how I make a living - and from acting - but I never stopped playing and producing and recording music.
I've been a big Bob Marley fan forever. Forever. Like big, huge. Bob Marley and the Beatles, that's my big, giant music influence. I can listen to them all the time.
I'm kind of long in the tooth to fly in in a cape now, so I'd have to be, like, the voice of reason or somebody. 'Don't do that, super-fellow!'
The economy in Ireland has been rampaging ahead for the last 15 years. Barring an international, political or natural catastrophe, things can only get better for the Irish.
I'd like to produce, direct, write, score, and star in a film in exactly the way Chaplin did. I'll do that before I'm thirty.
You know why they think I'm reclusive? I don't do the Hollywood stuff. I've never been on the circuit.
You know, making a movie is a collaborative effort and sometimes all the ingredients don't work out. I know that every now and again I am going to make a movie that won't work.
From the very beginning, I always tried to make dialogue flow comfortably; I always did that to make it seem more authentic.
If I don't die in a plane crash or something, this country has a rare opportunity to watch a great talent grow.
There's this little box that African-American actors have to work in, in the first place, and I was able to rise above that box. I could have done a bunch of movies where I stayed as the Axel Foley or Reggie Hammond persona. But I didn't want to be doing the same thing all the time. Every now and then, you crash and burn, but that's part of it.
I don't think more concentration is required for Robert De Niro to do what he does as for Jim Carrey to do what he does.
The same way you can see me sit at a table in a movie and be six different people, the mother and the uncle and all these different things, when I'm in the studio, I can do that, too. I'm not trying to be a recording artist and have a certain type of music for the radio.
Getting divorced didn't sour me on the institution of marriage. I'll tell you what I'll never do: I'll never get divorced again.
The studios gotta start making more stuff where black folks get quality stuff. But I can't trip about that because I've been making movies for 35 years, and I've played everything from an old lady to a donkey, so I can't be on here talking about, 'They don't give us enough roles' and diversity.
You know, if you look all my stuff... If you go back to 'Saturday Night Live,' my stuff always has music, even a bunch of my comedy stuff - like in 'Shrek,' the donkey is always singing. Music is always there.
