With age, you see people fail more. You see yourself fail more. How do you keep that fearlessness of a kid? You keep going. Luckily, I'm not afraid to make a fool of myself.
Hugh JackmanRead
Acting is something I love. It's a great craft that I have a lot of respect for. But I don't think it's any greater challenge than teaching 8-year-olds or any other career. In my life, I try not to make it more important than it is and I just hope that rubs off on the people around me.
Interpretation
Acting is a valued craft, but it should not be seen as more important than other professions, such as teaching.
In this quote, Hugh Jackman emphasizes the importance of perspective in valuing different professions. He expresses his love and respect for acting while advocating for the acknowledgment of the significance and challenges of teaching and other careers, suggesting that no job should be deemed more important than another. By maintaining this humble attitude, he hopes to inspire those around him to appreciate all forms of work equally.
In practice
In a speech at a charity event emphasizing the value of educators.
With age, you see people fail more. You see yourself fail more. How do you keep that fearlessness of a kid? You keep going. Luckily, I'm not afraid to make a fool of myself.
Becoming a father, I think it inevitably changes your perspective of life. I don't get nearly enough sleep. And the simplest things in life are completely satisfying. I find you don't have to do as much, like you don't go on as many outings.
I've always felt that if you back down from a fear, the ghost of that fear never goes away. It diminishes people. So I've always said 'yes' to the thing I'm most scared about. The fear of letting myself down - of saying 'no' to something that I was afraid of and then sitting in my room later going, 'I wish I'd had the guts to say this or that' - that galvanizes me more than anything.
Because I believe actually the more you do something, the less frightening it becomes because you start to realize the outcome is not as important as you think.
I think the most interesting question is, why do you act? I act because I have felt in acting some of the most free moments of my life...I think it's also one thing that scares me the most.
I have a terrific marriage, but unlike a lot of relationships where they ebb and flow, no matter what happens you fall deeper and deeper in love every day. It's kind of the best thing that can happen to you. It's thrilling.
All fiction, if it's successful, is going to appeal to the emotions. Emotion is really what fiction is all about. That's not to say fiction can't be thoughtful, or present some interesting or provocative ideas to make us think. But if you want to present an intellectual argument, nonfiction is a better tool. You can drive a nail with a shoe but a hammer is a better tool for that. But fiction is about emotional resonance, about making us feel things on a primal and visceral level.
I was honoured when they asked me to appear at the president's birthday rally in Madison Square Garden. There was like a hush over the whole place when I came on to sing 'Happy Birthday,' like if I had been wearing a slip, I would have thought it was showing or something. I thought, 'Oh, my gosh, what if no sound comes out!'
Leave America and you'll find that the consumers in many other countries enjoy watching advertising. Not because the products are better, but because the ads are produced to be entertaining. Sometimes they are funny. Sometimes they are dramatic. Sometimes they are just beautiful.
Luxury is not a necessity to me, but beautiful and good things are.
Poets are excellent students of blizzards and salt and broken statuary, but they are always elsewhere for the test. Any intention in the writing of poetry besides the aim to make a poem, of engaging the materials, SHOULD be disappointed. If the poet does not have the chutzpah to jeopardize habituated assumptions and practices, what will be produced will be sleep without dream, a copy of a copy of a copy.
I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue.
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