The key is just to ignore the pain because physical comedy only works if you see someone get hurt and they aren't actually hurt. If someone gets hit in the face with a bat falls down and gets back up it's funny. If they stay down and their jaw is wired shut in the next scene it's really tragic and weird. You have to pretend it doesn't hurt.

What I don't like is when I see stuff that I know has had a lot of improv done or is playing around where there's no purpose to the scene other than to just be funny. What you don't want is funny scene funny scene funny scene and now here's the epiphany scene and then the movie's over.

Especially with a comedy you've got the clear cut goal of trying to make a scene funny. It's not like drama where you're trying to achieve some kind of emotion or trying to further the story along. You're trying to figure out what's the funniest way to do something.

A James Cagney love scene is one where he lets the other guy live.

Sweet is the scene where genial friendship plays the pleasing game of interchanging praise.

I felt extremely uncomfortable as the focal point in the spotlight. I really like the behind the scenes role because all my freedom is there.

I got into shape because I took kick-boxing lessons every day to prepare for a fight scene with Taylor Lautner. I really wanted to lie down and eat Chinese food but I kick-boxed every morning and ran. If someone was filming you with your kit off you'd do the same thing.

I would say stay the hell away from the party scene. Anything you put in front of your goal and especially something like that whether it's too much gambling too much food too much cold beers on the weekend - anything that you put in front of the prize is going to end up getting in the way and hurting you in the end.

Olympia was a town crawling with music. I was new to the whole punk scene. The culture shock continued Olympia had bagels! We didn't have bagels in Arkansas. You could order vegetarian food all over town! It was so crazy to me - a place with so many vegetarians the restaurants made special dishes for them?

I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs my kidneys my liver my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me-like food or water.

What's powerful about a love scene is not seeing the act. It's seeing the passion the need the desire the caring the fear.

My greatest fear is feeling like a professional novelist. Somebody who creates characters who sits down and has pieces of paper taped to the wall - what's going to happen in this scene or this act. What I like is for it to be a much more scary sloppy reflection of who I am.

Young actors often don't think of the consequences of doing nudity or sex scenes. They want the role so badly that they agree to be exploited and then end up embarrassing family friends and even strangers.

All an actor has is their blind faith that they are who they say they are today in any scene.

Mississippi Mermaid was a very special experience because we only had the dialogues for the scenes we were shooting the night before.

Obviously my life and my job in 2010 is very different from Peggy's experience in the 1960s. I exist in a world that enjoys more equality between men and women. But I don't take any of that into my performance. I just want to play the character as who she is as an individual - scene to scene.

'Friends' was an education in intelligent comedic banter in intelligent vernacular. It was an education in scene study. It was an education in group dynamic. I came out of there with a master's degree in comedy.

I never felt I would be part of the international scene for 50 caps in my wildest dreams.

In both business and personal life I've always found that travel inspires me more than anything else I do. Evidence of the languages cultures scenery food and design sensibilities that I discover all over the world can be found in every piece of my jewelry.

I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.

For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural death is the obscene mystery the ultimate affront the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied.

I have stepped off the relationship scene to come to terms with myself. I have spent most of my adult life being 'someone's girlfriend' and now I am happy being single.

I wasn't sure how my dad would react. There was an agent sitting behind them and he told me he was embarrassed to watch the scenes. My parents have always been very open. They trust my decisions.

My dad took me to all the best rock and punk shows when I was growing up and music has always been a part of my life. So I'm very interested in the music scene and I suppose that's why I've ended up going out with musicians. Dave Pirner is still one of my best friends.