My husband calls it winging it - the way I just took what the studios gave me, didn't do my homework and avoided roles that would risk my image.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I know I'm fly - don't get me wrong. But I don't look, like, standard Hollywood. As a comedian, it's something you learn to use.
The only way to describe my involvement in 'Planes' is that it's an absolute dream come true for me. Getting to be a bad guy in any project is fun, let alone being a Disney villain. I can't imagine anything getting better than that!
I had come to the point when I realized it was unlikely that my film career was going to move beyond a certain level of role. And I was - because I had graphic instances of it - handicapped by the success of Star Trek. A director would say, 'I don't want Jean-Luc Picard in my movie' - and this was compounded by X-Men as well.
I've always tried to kind of stretch my wings as an actor and do things that are different.
I think aerobatic flying is athletic. I don't do aerobatic flying, but I would put that in a category of a sport. I would put regular flying in the category of an art or machine-type thing.
The way you present a stunt is tied in to the way you photograph it, so you're hanging out with the cinematographer.
Making a film, it uses a certain... 'pretend-muscle,' I don't know what you want to call it. It exhausts something in me, I find. It has to be really something to get me interested.
When I did 'Shaft', I was so happy to be working and to have been a star of a major motion picture, I had no idea or concept of where it was going to go, and it turned out to be this huge film. That was the icing on the cake.
Especially as a director on 'West Wing,' I directed a lot of different things in a lot of different ways and really stretched my wings.
I was directing before I knew it was called that.