Actors From Toronto

"All the conversation is focused around pronouns and things like that, and I’m like, however you read me is fine. I know how I read myself."

"Getting a laugh out of someone is such a empowering feeling."

"I’d love for us to reach a point where gender didn’t have to be the defining aspect of our identity, but we’re far from that."

"I crave nature. When I’m in it, I love it. But I’m not a good camper. I’m good for the day."

"Yeah it’s the same old story of labels being important in terms of fighting for legal rights, but being so inadequate in terms of expressing nuances of existing. And as soon as you choose a label it ends up inflating that part of your identity above other parts that are just as important."

"Exercise is key for me to just stay connected to the ol’ bode. It’s tough. Even though we know how to feel better. We know all these things. We just don’t do them. Everyone knows if they were on their phone less they’d be happier and more fulfilled. But it’s hard. Everything is designed to keep us distracted."

"It’s so frustrating that so much of identity is about comparison. I just feel like myself. I don’t even feel non-binary. I just wake up, have a coffee and go to work."

"And being so confused, because I don’t feel like I want to go to the men’s changing room, and I don’t feel like I’m safe in the girl’s changing room."

"Acting is about trusting your instincts, not censoring yourself and not looking back. Directing is the opposite in a lot of ways. It's measured. Number one, as a director, I get the script way before the actors do, so I have moments to graph out how the episode should be, understand the plot points and convey that to the actors. It's a much more structured approach, which is a bit more of my personality. I like to be more calm and in control. From there, you hope the actors bring other creative variables to the table. It's collaborative, but I'm still steering the ship."

"Most comedians want to be the architect of their own embarrassment. They have horrible self-esteem issues. I would rather push myself into the mud. I don't want to be pushed into the mud. I think that is probably true. I think most people struggle with self-acceptance. But comedians get a chance to self externalize."

"Fame is not creativity, it’s the industrial disease of creativity."

"They say that comedy and sausages are the two things that if you know how they're made they affect the appetite. I'm always creating and writing stuff so it's nice for me to be able to watch it as a fan."

"Everything I do is autobiographical in some way. Wayne's World was me growing up in the suburbs of Toronto and listening to heavy metal, and Austin Powers was every bit of British culture that my father, who passed away in 1991, had forced me to watch and taught me to love. With the guru Pitka, after my father died, I went on a spiritual quest, and it's very hard when you're a comedian to go on a spiritual quest, because your natural instinct is to be cynical."

"Interaction with fans has always been one of my most coveted prizes as an actor. The chance to stand or sit or have dinner or share a drink, with people who appreciate your work as a performer and who feel genuinely compelled to share a story with you. Whether they loved the effects or about how your character, or that situation, or the overall arc of that one story helped them in some way; resolve something in their lives, address some unanswered question, or even just entertained them. It's always really humbling to connect with fans. I'm very glad to be in a position to touch people’s lives in a creative way. To share and love and teach through story."

"In a way, those stories will be lost in time if we don’t fight for them, because white people aren’t going to write it for us. So in a lot of ways, I feel like it’s our responsibility to kind of, to document and to expose it, what has been going on in our world and our collective world and communities, and to share that story. .. Kung fu for kung fu’s sake, as an aesthetic or a prop, that’s where it starts to get tropey and dangerous. [But] there’s a reason why when Hong Kong action was introduced to Western audiences, people went bananas for it. Kung fu is, objectively, really cool."

"Even when I was a struggling actor, I was writing scripts, which were terrible, but I was fueled by a belief that I had to create the door. The right door wasn’t always going to open for me. Sometimes I was going to have to just crash through it or build one where there was no door before."

"From the moment that Marvel Studios decided that there needed to be a voice for Asian characters and a lead Asian character in the space of the [Marvel Cinematic Universe], they have all kind of considered what the best way was ... to incorporate a story that both celebrates Asianness and all of its wonderful dimensions, and its facets and its nuances, and also celebrates martial arts. .. I grew up loving Jackie Chan and Jet Li and certainly Bruce Lee. But as I got older, I started to question: Is that all we have? Is that all that the world sees in us — that that is the only value that we have, particularly in the entertainment industry? .. We have a lot of heroes. We have Asian heroes, we have Asian American heroes, men, women, of all ages, and not all of them do martial arts. But that doesn't mean that they don't have their own arcs, their own stories, their own subtleties and nuances. And I think that's what's important. .. I'm trying to take everything that my parents gave me and take the next step forward for my children, so that they may feel more included and more equal. It's just never even occurred to me not to speak out. I don't think I should be held to any sort of pedestal. I just think that I'm going to be one of those voices that are unapologetic, that are supportive of our community, because we just haven't had that many over time. And certainly I think we're at that stage where we are starting to learn as a community as a whole, that we are stronger together than we are apart."

"Wouldn’t they want that first Asian superhero to be somebody who looked the part a little bit more? What I’ve always really appreciated about MCU superheroes versus elsewhere is that they are trying to disrupt the idea of what a superhero can be."

"I was probably more optimistic than I should have been. I’ve always had a bit of delusional confidence. I think it’s the same delusional confidence I had when I first decided to become an actor as a 23-year-old failed accountant with absolutely zero training or idea about how the business worked. .. I was at a point where I was like, “I don’t deserve this role. What about me makes me worthy?” And ultimately, what I came to was that my self-worth doesn’t come from my appearance. It comes from whatever is going on underneath, whether you want to call it personality or charisma—that was going to be the thing that won me the role."

"(1:39:25AM) I recently did a show in which I played a pedophile, and did a significant amount of research (clinical studies mind you, not the "method" stuff) on the disorder and how it's perceived in the media. In the end the role completely changed the way I look at pedophilia and has made me much more sympathetic to anyone who is born with those urges. From a biological standpoint it’s no different than being gay — a small mutation in the genome that determines our sexual preferences. Depending on what area of the world you were born and what time, it also may have been a perfectly acceptable thing to act on those urges. Now we all know that taking advantage of minors is wrong. Disgusting and vile, even. But with the exception of Germany we are going about it completely COMPLETELY the wrong way. It's like we having learned anything by studying homosexuality - we're talking about exploring the same "cures" to pedophilia as we were about homosexuality 20 years ago, a la conversion therapy and whatnot. As a part of my research I discovered that these people have literally nowhere to turn, even non-offending pedophiles. They cannot seek treatment in most of the word because the therapist or psychiatrist would be legally required to report any (1:51:46AM) Hey - done a fair amount of research for a role that I did (I'm an actor. No, not Kevin Bacon haha) and I wanted to provide any assistance if I can. What we currently know about the disorder is this - like homosexuality, it exists on a spectrum. For example, we all know that the whole "barely legal" subgenre of adult entertainment is HUGE. Anybody who jerks off to pictures of an 18 y/o and turns around and says all pedophiles ought to be killed is a fucking hypocrite IMO. But I digress; from what you've typed here it seemed that you have a mild preference and you are able to be satisfied with adults. Some people with the disorder find themselves ONLY attracted to children, and that could be potentially problematic especially in a society where there is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY TO GET HELP. Please continue to talk/write using throwaways and please avoid child pornography - it may seem innocent but even watching it is propogating the entire industry which I'm sure you agree is disgusting. Plus the conseqences you face if caught are life-changing; worse than death if you ask me. You have a good head on your shoulders - I wish you the best and know you will not make any decisions you will regret."

"Growing up, I was obsessed with being desirable. Over the course of auditioning for [Shang Chi], I never really thought I had a chance the whole time, because I never felt like I was the best looking or the tallest or the best at martial arts. .. I have days where I really feel sexy and on top of the world, and I have days where I don’t. But more than everything I can be at peace with who I am as a whole—my charisma, my humor, my soul."

"You take somebody on a golf course and their character defects and shortcomings come out. That’s how I picked my manager, my accountant, and my lawyer. You get someone who hits a bad shot and who goes crazy, and throws the club, you want him working for you? You want him to represent you? You get someone who hits a bad shot and who goes “how can I correct that? Do you have any ideas?” That’s the guy I hire. But also, I work all the time. I don’t take big vacations. Sometimes, a golf game is the only thing I get."

"Sci-fi was always understood to be politically based. It’s a way of setting up a political message in a format that people can digest. If you tell somebody “That person’s a liar,” they can say, “No, I saw him last week and I trust him.” But if you make them a reptile and give them the same information, they’ll say, “Yeah, he’s a reptile. They all lie.” That’s the great thing about sci-fi."

"I know that many artists feel that they are frauds - that's part of the pleasure of creativity."

"I'm always working on the same thing, the creation of an identity. It's mysterious: We think identity is genetically given, but I believe there is creative will involved with the decision of who we are going to be. All my movies are concerned with this."

"We are confused and bemused, and think that it’s a momentary delusion that will soon dissipate, leaving our lives to continue as they were."

"The desire to be loved is really death when it comes to art."

"Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion."

"All stereotypes turn out to be true. This is a horrifying thing about life. All those things you fought against as a youth: you begin to realize they're stereotypes because they're true."

"I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation. Films that make you confront aspects of your own life that are difficult to face. Just because you're making a horror film doesn't mean you can't make an artful film."

"Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos."

"Technology isn’t really effective, it doesn’t really expose its true meaning, I feel, until it has been incorporated into the human body. And most of it does, in some way or another. Electronics. People wear glasses. They wear hearing aids that are really little computers. They wear pacemakers. They have their intestines modified. It’s really quite incredible what we’ve been able to do to the human body and really take it some place that evolution on its own could not take it. Technology has really taken over evolution. We’ve seized control of evolution ourselves without really quite being conscious of it. It’s no longer the environment that affects change in the human body, it’s our minds, it’s our concepts, our technology that are doing that."

"Dolphins read each other’s emotions by sonar and it’s the inside of the body, the configuration of the viscera, that lets dolphins know whether the dolphin they are meeting is tense or happy. Their emotions are much more connected with the insides of each other’s bodies. We don’t have that. It’s like denying 90% of what we are physically, not knowing it."

"Omnisexuality is the term that I use in Hysteria. There seems to be a strain of pure sexuality that can embody itself in any possible way, female, male, something else. This is the first time I’ve ever articulated this, but I think I’m most interested in that essence of sexuality that seems to be able to take many forms but has still a specific feel and tone to it that we all recognize. You can’t really define it as male or female. I’m very fascinated with the way in which maleness and femaleness is specifically physical. but not necessarily purely sexual. There is a difference amongst all those things. This takes you right back to the mind/body schism that I go crazy with all the time."

"If you’ve ever sat in a room with twins, immediately you’re forced to deal with this confusion. You’re afraid to call them by name because you’re afraid you’re going to get it wrong. At first being a twin is a source of power, you can switch, you can fool people—but then it becomes a vulnerability because people confuse you when you don’t want them to. The famous story of the twins who were both spanked when either one of them did something wrong because the parents wanted to make sure they got the right twin. So that would immediately make each twin totally responsible for the other one’s actions and therefore would make you want to control the other twin’s actions. It gets quite twisted and the confusion of identities becomes quite intense."

"I think all my movies are commercial. That's my delusion. I thought Naked Lunch was wildly entertaining, so what do I know?"

"I'm an atheist, and so I have a philosophical problem with demonology and supporting the mythology of Satan, which involves God and heaven and hell and all that stuff. I'm not just a nonbeliever, I'm an antibeliever - I think it's a destructive philosophy."

"It just shows what I've said. [He's a] fucking piece of shit. Like, motherfucker you ain't even know this woman. You didn't even know her. You were in middle school. Before, I just spoke on what I didn't like about him. I didn't know him so I couldn't say 'I didn't like him. I didn’t like this.' But now it's like, 'you fucking piece of shit. You piece of shit. Who the fuck is you to fucking write…to….to…I mean. Allow her music to live on and not include people she's always worked with? Not include her recipe? That’s like saying, 'you know what? I'ma make KFC but I'm not using the colonel's recipe!' That ain't KFC, nigga! That’s YOUR FC. Your fuckin chicken. [laughs] That’s some bullshit and it ain't the same shit. No let;s talk about this a little longer. That’s some bullshit. That’s some fucking bullshit! Fuck that! Fuck that! I don't give a fuck! What, nigga?! It is what it is man! It's wrong. Honor her legacy. Honor what she did. You have no right to make it yours! If you're going to allow her to live on, do it in a manner that honors what she did. That's all you can do! Respectfully. Rightfully. 'Oh I'm going to make this and re-' Who the fuck are you?! Who the fuck are you to change..?!"

"Don't ever forget the moment you began to doubt, transitioning from fitting in to standing out."

"Can't even find the perfect brush to paint what is going through my mind."

"I'm doin classic shit in all my sessions."

"I'm just doing me and you can never understand it. Chicks get hammered, big dick bandit. Money flowing like a slit wrist no bandage."

"Young Money man this shit so timeless and I'm in the mood to get faded so please bring yo finest and what are all yo names again we drunk remind us? Are any of yall into girls like I am, let's be honest (lesbian(est))."

"My brother P-Rain knows we fuck with the same hoes, plus he taught me how to spot a officer in plain clothes, staring at you pussy niggas all I see is rainbows, hopping on a jet to every single Lil Wayne show. Me and little jazzy, please do not harass me just holla if you got me and fuck you if you had me."

"Last name Ever, first name Greatest"

"In your city, faded off the brown: Nino She insist she got more class, we know Swimmin' in the money, come and find me: Nemo If I was at the club, you know I balled: chemo"

"I'm a rapper turned singer and you can tell that he smoke, but I don't need my vocal cords all I hit are C notes."

"I am the topic of conversation this a celebration lets toast to the fact that I moved out my mama basement to a condo downtown cause it's all about location I sit and drink wine and watch Californication of life."

"I'm on my Disney shit, goofy flow/ on records I'm Captain Hook, and my new car is Rufio/ Damn, where my roof just go?"

"We walk the same path but got on different shoes Live in the same building but we got different views"