A lot of times, scripts are written so the character is all one way. Even with 'Bringing Out the Dead,' the character was written a little more generic.

I don't know if I hadn't grown up poor, and in the neighborhood I did, if I would have had that much to bring to my art form. I call upon my past with characters.

In this industry, very few actors can control their career.

There could be some unknown actor who's a better actor than Ving Rhames, but no one knows that actor, so Ving Rhames will get the job.

When you have a child, you think about your personal history and what you offer them as a larger narrative, and I realised I knew nothing about my father's circumstances other than what he'd told me.

Mum was very cool. Even though she came from a pretty affluent family, she was cool. She was really good, a very normal person.

I come from a big family of storytellers and, growing up, I liked hearing about the years before I was born.

My father was the church organist; the village curate was my mother's brother, a former monk from the order of Pijar, a very well-educated and ascetic man who loved nothing but solitude.