As an actor, I’m always playing solitary characters. But as a director, I’m always making ensemble movies, which focus on lots of people’s lives and how they intertwine.
As an actor, I’m attracted to drama; as a director, it’s humor – because it’s the story of my life, and I can’t be that serious about it. Being alone is a big theme in all my movies, both as a director and as an actress.
But now I really don’t want to work unless I really, really care about a project.
I conducted a bunch of interviews for Interview magazine. They actually paid me. I think I was probably 18 or 19. I was in college and I remember feeling, like, “Wow.” I had a real job, and they paid me money, and it was exciting.
I don’t think there is anything good about fame. ‘Tables in restaurants.’ People say that but, then again, why don’t you just call the day before? Or go eat somewhere else?
I am the luckiest filmmaker I know.
Casting is a long process for me. I take a lot of time.
I think there is something to being curious about your choices, but not wanting to kind of pierce the bubble of them, because it takes away from the act of discovering.
People are always surprised when I say that I’m an atheist.
There is nothing in this world that I am prouder of than my ability to feel, to survive and, yes, to be a fool for what I love and believe in.
I want to change the system from within the system. And that means focusing and specializing.
I look back at my career when I was younger and can connect what I was going through at the time with the characters I was playing. I see the similarities in them reflecting on my life.
When I go into the stores, I pet the saddles. Until security comes and takes me away.
But the reason I became, why I wanted to be in the business was because there was Midnight Cowboy.
Just to set the record straight, a salary for a given on-screen performance does not include the right to invade anyone’s privacy, to destroy someone’s sense of self.
By the first week of shooting, you know exactly where your film is heading based on the psychology of your director.
I don’t need to be Tom Cruise. I just need to work forever.
If I make two movies my entire life, and they’re two movies that – whether they make a lot of money or two people go to see them – they speak of me, then I consider them incredibly successful. I don’t need to be Steven Spielberg.
In a weird way, that’s the beauty of being an actor. You get to live out things that you’re afraid of, and you get to say, ‘Well, maybe I can get to the end of it and survive it intact and I can be the hero of my own story.’ It’s kind of a way of exorcising fear.
Interestingly, when you do films, sometimes you have conscious reasons, things that you were looking for, or stuff that you were trying to do. And then, you see the film and you think, “Wow, it ended up being something totally different!”