There are a lot of conservative people, a lot of moderate people, Republicans, Democrats, in Hollywood. It is just that the conservative people by the nature of the word itself play closer to the vest. They do not go around hot dogging it.

The Democrats do fine in presidential elections; their problem is they can’t get out the vote in the midterm elections.

I’ve taken so many kids out of Pittsburgh and onto the great white way in New York City right into a Broadway show.

If anything, a lot of electronic music is music that no one listens to at home, hardly. It’s really only to be heard when everyone’s out enjoying it.

What I like about Elvis is the same thing I like about James Brown, Michael Jackson, Prince. These guys, back in the day, there was no smoke and mirrors. It was just raw talent. They would step out onstage and command an audience. Talk about awesome.

If I want to be called ‚The Rock,‘ I’ll be called ‚The Rock.‘ If I want to go back to wrestling, I’ll go back to wrestling.

One of the reasons I connect to the Super Bowl is that I approach my shows like an athlete.

I came to California and got signed at a young age. And it’s not like you see in the movies, where you start rubbing shoulders with Timbaland and Pharrell, and you become a giant pop star.

The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.

Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.

In California, they don’t throw their garbage away – they make it into TV shows.

I sure lost my musical direction in Hollywood. My songs were the same conveyer belt mass production, just like most of my movies were.

Hollywood is a place where they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul.

We were on for six years. We were in syndication for a while. It had its run. I still see the people from ‚Mr. Belvedere,‘ too. We stay in touch.

You’ve gotta understand that with branding and the way things are promoted, in our day and age, your older movie stars are not reachable or accessible because they’re not a part of the whole social media world.

When I got into this, I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me, I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor, and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

Republicans are men of narrow vision, who are afraid of the future.

In Hollywood a girl’s virtue is much less important than her hairdo.

I now have two different audiences. There’s the one that has been watching my action films for 20 years, and the American family audience. American jokes, less fighting.

Governance should be designed as an equalizer. Democrats are more inclined towards working families and those who are struggling for a better life.

If a star or studio chief or any other great movie personages find themselves sitting among a lot of nobodies, they get frightened – as if somebody was trying to demote them.

An actress is not a machine, but they treat you like a machine. A money machine.

I’m always amazed by the people who work on stage who sing night after night, day after day, week in week out.

I will never win an Oscar, and do you know why? First of all, because I’m not Jewish. Secondly, I make too much money for all those old farts in the Academy.

I don’t know if high society is different in other cities, but in Hollywood, important people can’t stand to be invited someplace that isn’t full of other important people. They don’t mind a few unfamous people being present because they make good listeners.

We can be civil. We can still be friends, and be Democrats and Republicans, and have different views.

When I was a kid, I loved Elvis, and Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. But I had no connection to Hollywood – and being a movie star was such a far-fetched idea, growing up in Hawaii.

What’s fascinating is, people in Washington would rather spend time in Hollywood, and people in Hollywood would rather spend time in Washington.

I believe the Republicans have never thought that democracy was anything but a tribal myth.

I think the message has already been sent to Hollywood, which is that this kid’s a hard worker, he’s talented, and people are coming out to see him. And when you have box-office results, Hollywood treats you different. Hollywood stands up.

In Hollywood, a lot of times when something is in development, it just takes a lot of time.

The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.

At the major studios, you see people wanting to remake a TV series, wanting to make a sequel.

I’ve seen too many ups and downs in the movie industry.

In those days, the early 1980s, TV and film were interchangeable.

It was 1996 and I was at a crossroads in my career. I had been working in Hollywood as a writer and was very unhappy. I had pitched an idea for a book some six months earlier, and the book packager, Joost Elffers, wanted me to write up a treatment for it.

I know that a large part of my fan base is gay. They’ve shown me love from the start. I mean in this industry, everyone from my glam people to my dancers are gay. You can’t be homophobic in this line of work – I’m a pop star!

The average Hollywood film star’s ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend.

I want to try something different in Hollywood, to tell the audience I am not just an actor star – I am an actor, too.

Only the public can make a star. It’s the studios who try to make a system out of it.

I personally don’t like to go see romantic comedies. But people do want to see them, and they seem to want to see me in them.

The movies are the only business where you can go out front and applaud yourself.

There’s no difference between movies and television. None at all. Except in a lot of cases, television’s much better than movies.

Every time I make American film I just trust American directors and American writers.

A film is sort of binary – it either works or it doesn’t work. It has nothing to do with how good a job you do. If you bring it up to an adequate level where the audience goes with the movie, then it works, that is all.

I’m just changing the game because I know what the fans want and the people want ‚cause I’m a fan of hip-hop.

The dominant theory coming out of Hollywood is that peoples‘ attention spans are getting shorter and shorter and they need more stimulation.

It’s very intense to be in front of a live audience. It’s just an amazing experience. It’s dangerous. Everything out there is heightened. The bad stuff is extra-worse. The silences are extra-silent. The good stuff is amazing. It’s electric when you walk out there. For 90 minutes, you’re on this other planet.

I was born to play Hercules. I have loved and honored the mythology over the years – since I was a kid. When I first broke into Hollywood, ‚Hercules‘ was one of the movies that I – not chased, because I didn’t have the power to chase anything – but always had in the back of my mind.

I never called my work an ‚art‘. It’s part of show business, the business of building entertainment.

Democrats never agree on anything, that’s why they’re Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they would be Republicans.

Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the democrats believe every day is April 15.

Obama’s policies have been approximately the same as Bush’s, though there have been some slight differences, but that’s not a great surprise. The Democrats supported Bush’s policies.

I’ve always felt toward the slightest scene, even if all I had to do in a scene was just to come in and say, ‚Hi,‘ that the people ought to get their money’s worth and that this is an obligation of mine, to give them the best you can get from me.

We can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.

Meryl Streep is exactly as awesome as you would imagine Meryl Streep to be.

In the US, there is basically one party – the business party. It has two factions, called Democrats and Republicans, which are somewhat different but carry out variations on the same policies. By and large, I am opposed to those policies. As is most of the population.

I’d done a lot of research in Hollywood and in academia. I love research and so I wanted to kind of ground the book in history, in things that I read that were universal and timeless and then kind of let my own experiences sort of filter through all of this history.

It is no surprise that animation is Hollywood’s most successful and innovative genre.

Dakota Fanning is a child, but she is a wonderful actor. I don’t know what a child actor is. She’s an actor who’s a child.

I think, first of all, I don’t think people understand Ice Cube’s body of work. Ice Cube is a, and I hate to use the word ‚urban‘ but – when you think of Judd Apatow, and a person who’s launched so many careers, Ice Cube has done that for so many comedians, you know?