I’ve always been drawn to the best writing that I can find. I don’t care if it’s in movies or theater or whatever – if you want to be in front of an audience, you have to do writing you believe in.
I’ve always been interested in directing. I started acting when I was thirteen years old, so I’ve had some desire to do something else in my life.
One of the things that’s really lousy about making movies is that you have such little interaction with your audience.
I feel like everyone I meet is an imaginary friend. I don’t know. The older I get the more I wonder what’s real.
It is quite rare to find people who are really dedicated to a level of excellence. Most of us are really quite lazy most of the time.
You can’t keep wanting to be 20 years old. Everybody knows that, but what’s in the next room?
I’d really rather that nobody had a gun, and then nobody would have to worry about it. That would be more my theory. In America, there’s this knee-jerk response that more walls and more guns make people safer, and I’m entirely suspect of that way of thinking.
If you study the history of mankind, it seems to be a history of violence. Certainly the history of art, whether you look at paintings or movies or plays or whatever, is just a litany of murder and death.
We’re fascinated by things that scare us, and one of the things that scares us is violence. Violence exists. It’s a real part of our lives. We are obsessed with what we’re scared of, but it certainly doesn’t define us.
The truth is that the more you get paid, the less freedom you have. They never pay you for nothing.
I started acting when I was 13 years old and I feel like I really admire actors who are these kind of amazing shape-changing people, that they almost can turn themselves into other people.
One of the things I can do is to try to put myself in different kinds of movies and that kind of subtly changes my work. By the time my obituary is written, I want there to be a great western and a great comedy.
The only thing I can point to of why I survived is I have a family that loves me and never wanted any money from me.
I have a daughter and the thing I wish for her is not love, fame, money or anything like that. It’s just one great best friend. You know, if you have somebody that has your back, you’re gonna be all right.
If you covet fame, if you covet all the superficial accolades, you’re gonna be miserable ’cause you’re never going to get enough praise. If you covet contributing something substantive to movies, music, literature, then you won’t be unhappy.
The idea that a film is created in the editing room – it’s only a certain kind of movie that’s made in the editing room and it’s not one that I really want to see.
You are always in the right place at exactly the right time, and you always have been.
Pay attention: what you need to know is usually in front of you. There are no secrets, just things people choose not to notice.
There have always been two ways to be rich: by accumulating vast sums or by needing very little.
Love. Love is the end goal. It is the music of our lives. There is no obstacle that enought love cannot move.