Actors are exposed in a way that nobody else can understand. They are subject to the likes and dislikes of people their entire life, no matter how successful they are. At the same time, in order to be liked, you have to not be yourself. So it's a very complicated human exercise - an alchemy that I have never understood.
Perhaps it's time to stop analyzing Sarah Palin as a politician. Maybe, in her own muddled way, she is at last owning up to the fact that she has been miscast. You don't need politics anymore once you've discovered that the alchemy of celebrity has turned you into a 24-carat phenomenon.
There's an alchemy that happens in my eyes when you mix it up, when you have a seasoned actor on set and your first-timer.
You got to realise that when I was 20 years old, I had a house, a Mercedes, a Corvette and a million dollars in the bank before I could buy alcohol legally.
Let me be the first to tell you, drinking alcohol is the worst thing to do in cold weather. Hot soup is the best because the process of digesting food helps to warm you up.
If they took all the drugs, nicotine, alcohol and caffeine off the market for six days, they'd have to bring out the tanks to control you.
Millions of people die every day. Everyone's got to go sometime. I've came by this particular tumor honestly. If you smoke, which I did for many years very heavily with occasional interruption, and if you use alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it in your sixties.
I can't tell you how much we laughed on the set to have Alec Guinness in a scene with a big, furry dog that's flying a space ship.
I tell people, if you really want me to look that good, why don't you cough up about $2 million more and hire Alec or Billy? If you want me to do it, this is what you get.
I played with Graham Thorpe and Alec Stewart; if anything off the field affected Graham his cricket life was not important and you had to give him a break. But if Alec had issues at home you would never know about it; he would turn up and think: 'This is my job, I can do it.'
When you wash your hands, when you make a cup of coffee, when you're waiting for the elevator - instead of indulging in thinking, these are all opportunities for being there as a still, alert presence.
When people criticize the computer generation, the high tech generation, and say they neglect the body - well, just walk through a college campus, and you'll see the healthiest, most physically conscious and alert group of human beings I've ever met. So they're not nerds at all.
Chewing gum actually lowers your cortisol levels, the hormone responsible for stress. But chewing gum doesn't just reduce stress, it also makes you more alert and improves your performance in memory-oriented tasks. It does so by increasing the blood flow to your brain and alerting your senses.
No one really sees pro athletes behind the scenes. They don't know how hard they work. They don't see how you work on the basics. They couldn't possibly know. You wouldn't think that someone who hits like Alex Rodriguez needs to use a tee every day. But that's how he stayed on top of it.
You see Tom Brady, you see Alex Smith, and you see all those guys in the pocket and how quick they are with their footwork and how they get the ball out fast. I have to get like that.
You can say I had a severe case of 'Roots' envy. I wanted to be like Alex Haley, and I wanted to be able to... do my family tree back to the slave ship and then reverse the Middle Passage, as I like to put it, and find the tribe or ethnic group that I was from in Africa.
You know, I remember watching Morgan Freeman when he did the two Alex Cross movies, and he's so confident that he's going to knock the scene dead. And I'm really confident that I can tell a good story now, so I just don't worry about things.
I won't say I've never felt in Alex Salmond's shadow, but latterly, when Alex was leader, I didn't. It's more about my awareness of the fact I became First Minister during a parliamentary term. That means you're First Minister, but you haven't been elected in your own right as First Minister.
If your pal or neighbour is in the SNP, you're more likely to listen to them than if you just turn on the telly and see me or Alex. The growth of membership is building a politically engaged community base that hasn't been there in my lifetime.
When you look at the light bulb above you, you remember Thomas Alva Edison. When the telephone bell rings, you remember Alexander Graham Bell. Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. When you see the blue sky, you think of Sir C.V. Raman.
