I am a really writer-oriented actor.
I’ve always felt that failure was a completely underrated experience.
We really don’t rest if we think our kids are drifting, or if we think they don’t have the right work ethic. It drives us crazy. Because we ultimately want them to succeed and, until they do, we feel in some way that something is not complete.
I’m a ‘what if’ person. I have always felt that failure was a completely underrated experience. I have taken blows. I have had high moments. But I don’t think the blows have ever hardened me. My enthusiasms are still big.
When I read Thirteen Days I was moved by it. It was just a great time for the world, in terms of looking back in history and seeing how we got ourselves into trouble and how we got ourselves out of trouble.
What is it you want? That’s a question that we all get posed sometimes internally and sometimes externally.
When I played Robin Hood, I knew the great role was Alan Rickman’s and it didn’t bother me. I always think that leading actors should be called the best supporting actors.
I think one of the first things to go as people’s lives start to go down is their dreams. Dreams should be the last thing to go – dreams are the things you go down with. If you’re left clinging to a piece of driftwood in the middle of the ocean, I’d put on it the word dreams.
There are a lot of things that come to bear on movies now that I don’t think are good for movies. They’re trying to appeal to the biggest demographic and, when they do that, you sometimes flatten out.
It’s never bothered me to work hard. I’ve probably worked on some of the longest schedules in movie history.
You can be as you choose to be. It’s an act of discipline sometimes, but it can be done.
Life’s better when it’s fun. Boy, that’s deep, isn’t it?
Sometimes it takes a partner to say, “What is it you want?” because I think we operate in life and sometimes we don’t know. We’re all in some kind of maze going after the cheese at the end, and we get it and we go, “What is it that we want?”
I like four-hour movies.
I just tried to build on my failures.
I dream of big things. I work for the small things. If you’re going to dream, you might as well dream big. A lot of that came from my mother. She was adamant about the work ethic – about how you can’t just dream things.
It’s such a cool thing in life to get what it is you want. Most of the time we don’t, but occasionally we do.
You just do the things that you love and see if other people can like them too.
When I see my children, and when I see the people who value me, I know how lucky I am.
I’m proud of all the movies I’ve made. They’re not sequels, they’re not franchises. And the reason I pick my films carefully is that I don’t want to spit on my life. I like to think of myself as more than that.