To get to be somebody who gets to love what they do for a living, that’s so rare, and so there must be some kind of price you have to pay.
The thing that makes a great genre movie is one that’s not just entertainment, not just horror or sci-fi or whatever. The ones I love are the genre pictures with some subversive message underlying it all.
I was being taken around by a press agent at the Venice Film Festival at age 18. Was it fun? Sure. But it was a dangerous path to be walking on as far as having a substantive life. Because the casualty rate at the Venice Film Festival for 18-year-olds? High.
If you don’t risk doing something foolish, you’ll never do anything special.
Some people burn out, and some people like Clint Eastwood, he was a wild, international movie star in his 30s, and he’s doing the best work of his life now. Go figure.
Right now, if you’re interested in being a dramatic actor, they’re not making that many just regular dramas. Movies have to have some other thing going on.
All that stuff with the tabloids is a kind of luxury tax I pay for all the good things I do in my life.
But the truth is, I’ve never wanted to be a movie star – and I’ve been pretty clear about that.
I love working on scripts. I love coming up with ideas about what people would dress like or talk like. I love all that.
A lot of American actors when they do Shakespeare put on a phoney English accent and it drives me crazy. You’re always fighting against the idea that only the British know how to do Shakespeare.
The girls who like me aren’t the ones I like. Or, if I do and they want to commit, I suddenly need tons of time with my friends.
I think that if you walk through this life and I end up being a bad father, then it won’t matter anything else I achieved in my life. It will all be irrelevant.
In all of our society, but especially in Hollywood, there is an obsession with perfection that can lead to self-loathing and neurosis and all that kind of stuff.
I met a lot of famous people when I was about 24. And none of them seemed very appealing. And so I didn’t know why I would struggle to be that kind of person.
Its difficult to do a genre film well, and it doesnt matter if youre talking vampire movies or Dawn of the Dead or The Thing or Escape From New York. Those kind of movies, they understand what the old-school B-movie is supposed to be, they get the throwback of it.
I’ve always watched actors on the red carpet getting drunk and making idiots of themselves and now I’m happy to join their ranks.
When you start becoming really successful, the demons start to tempt you – the demons of vanity and self importance, drug abuse, the feelings of fraudulence. But, it’s also a thrill. That’s what I found weird.
I think having nature be a part of people’s lives helps all of us see ourselves as part of something larger.
I thought I was so much smarter than everybody. And I’m not.
When you do ‘Before Sunset,’ you know while it’s a limited audience, there was a very small group of people that love ‘Before Sunrise.’ You feel a certain pressure to make sure that you uphold a level of quality that has been a bar. You set a bar and you have to at least match it.