I wasn’t a babe in the woods. I’d watched a lot of stars, from James Dean to Brando, and I’d seen everybody alive work at MGM. I had a certain old-timer’s quality, even though I was young and new, and drew on what I believed before I made it.
I thought of myself as part of the general filmmaking effort. And as my scope broadened, I began to think about directing. I wanted to be the guy who got to say whether the dress is red or blue.
As a means of supporting experiential element in film, once I begin to work on a particular movie I consider myself to be the tool of the director.
I’ve always understood money; it’s not a big mystical thing to me.
I did not want to be coming off the stage at the mercy of what somebody else told me I did.
There was a period when I just wanted to make what I wanted to make and I didn’t care what lie I had to tell.
Many actors will try something different once, but if it isn’t a box office success they’ll never do it again. In my opinion, there’s no point in going on with this job if you do the same thing over and over again.
When you use a dialect, you worry that the people you’re imitating will think you’re making fun of them.
OK, the director makes the movie. But some movies can’t get made without someone like me in them.
I feel very lucky because I don’t think there’s any part I can’t play. There are parts that scare me more than others...
I don’t want to direct a movie as good as Antonioni, or Kubrick, or Polanski, or whoever. I want it to be my own. I think I’ve got the seed of it and, what’s more, that I can make movies that are different and informed by my taste.
You have to do every movie one at a time. Trilogy is contrary to this ideology. My nightmare is to wake up and find myself the host of a TV series.
You can’t say, “I’m gonna make a hit movie.” You’re as dead as you could be.
I just know that sameness, repetition, and conceptualizing are the acting craft’s adversaries, and it seems more intelligent to start off within a framework where those things are, to some degree, taken out of your hands.
Staying together is a challenge. We all have to accept qualities in other people that aren’t always exactly what we want or need.
Once you’ve started a film you don’t become a wet noodle. You must have that conflictual interface because you don’t know, and they don’t know. It’s through conflict that you come out with something that might be different, better than either of you thought to begin with.
I know I can act. There aren’t too many other jobs I know how to do. Financially, I’ve lost money and made money, but I know my way around financially. I’ve been too many places. I’m like the bad penny.
For a long time, I was afraid to be alone. I had to learn how to be alone. And there are still times when I think, Uh-oh! I gotta talk to somebody here or I’m gonna go crazy! But I like to be alone. Now I do. I really do. There’s a big luxury in solitude.
I’ve always thought basketball was the best sport, although it wasn’t the sport I was best at. It was just the most fun to watch.
I’m such a perfectionist. I always feel overpraised or whatever. In the abstract, I know I’m a good person, a good professional. But it’s nice to be noticed a little bit, ain’t it?