Thomas Wilson
You run into rude people. Everyone runs into rude people.
Yes, I am certainly myself and have remained myself throughout this whole bumpy carnival.
With the people that I've been so lucky to work with, on SpongeBob SquarePants for example, it's just a wonderful group of people.
Which ever code we decide to live by, hopefully, if we're serious about it, it will color all our choices. No matter what code it is we've decided to live by.
We're showing up and doing our job as the cop or the jock or whatever that day on a sit-com, on a movie, a one-hour police show, whatever it is.
We're doing our job, we're going home and we're having dinner with the family.
We're doing a silly cartoon that every one understands that we're not creating some work of art but it's a lot of fun and kids love it. It has it's value.
Voice over work is, to me, sheer fun.
Ultimately, I become a better artist by knowing myself well and knowing who I am and not trying to be wildly different in my personal life from that it gives me a strong foundation because I know where I'm going back to.
Thirdly and I don't mean it in a prophletizing way, but I'm a man of private faith, but I'm a faithful person and my belief in something beyond us and that the things that we do actually matter is important.
The starvation that led to opportunity was - I was studying acting in New York. and I was doing some summer stock Shakespeare plays, but for all intents and purposes, I wasn't getting any jobs.
Sometimes it's in a job that I really care about and am very proud of and very pleased with and have a great time with a bunch of terrific actors that turns out to be excellent.
So, for my acting training and trying to get cast in plays, I just started showing up at comedy clubs every night.
So people like the way I work, others don't. I wish them all well, but I don't care what they think.
So I got to watch the great comedians perform every night. And the greatest of those was Richard Pryor.
Now in this middle part of my life, I've got to tell you, winds come, storms blow, and I have problems, but I feel pretty rock solid.
Now I'm a comedy dinosaur, but at the time, it was a much more free form thing.
Learning value, color, drawing. I thought in order to - no matter what kind of painting I wanted to do - I had to go, like so many generations before me, to a school and start drawing the figure.
Keep your head on straight, do the work and be who you are and you'll be the happiest guy in the end.
It's not like I'm the bitter guy who wants to turn his back on this thing.