As a young man, even if I was going to see a play or a film by myself, I didn’t feel like I was alone. There was something that was unfolding up there that brought me into it. And I recognised that. For those two hours, it made me feel like I belonged to something really good.
Prior to Saving Private Ryan I never worked with men. I was always working with some babe, and it was always about falling in love, and it just got turned around. I’m not looking for any particular kind of story. I wait until it comes across my desk.
I do not want to admit to the world that I can be a bad person. It is just that I don’t want anyone to have false expectations. Moviemaking is a harsh, volatile business, and unless you can be ruthless, too, there’s a good chance that you are going to disappear off the scene pretty quickly.
But the battles against loneliness that I fought when I was 16 are very different from those I fought when I was 27, and those are very different from the ones I fight at 44.
At the end of the day it’s got to be a good movie, it’s got to be a funny movie, and it’s got to make people think, ‘Hey, I couldn’t have spent my time any better.’
There is something basic about protecting land by taking it off the market. People should be able to enjoy where they live while at the same time protect the plants and animals around them.
I have gone through so many examinations of what a hero is, between the World War II stuff and the astronaut stuff.
As a boy Id often spend my days biking on riverbeds and arroyos and come home exhausted. I realize now how much I took for granted having the natural world so close at hand. It wasnt until I moved away, first to New York and then to Los Angeles, that I realized how much I missed the outdoors.
I always wanted to play Lestrade of Scotland Yard ’cause he’s a buffoon that gets to wear a uniform. I thought that would be fun.
Yeah! I got type-two diabetes! I’m sure there’s going to be some media scandal now, saying I got it because I gained and lost weight for movie parts or something – but I doubt that.
I had to say no to ‘Fantasy Island’ back when I was doing ‘Bosom Buddies.’
If you’re funny, if there’s something that makes you laugh, then every day’s going to be okay.
If you look at romantic comedies as pieces of commerce, the audience is looking for wish fulfillment.
I’m not interested in doing something edgy with a capital E just so everyone knows, ‘Oh, OK, now he’s showing us he can do edgy.’
Growing up in northern California has had a big influence on my love and respect for the outdoors. When I lived in Oakland, we would think nothing of driving to Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz one day and then driving to the foothills of the Sierras the next day.
Believing is seeing and seeing is believing.
There isn’t any great mystery about me. What I do is glamorous and has an awful lot of white-hot attention placed on it. But the actual work requires the same discipline and passion as any job you love doing, be it as a very good pipe fitter or a highly creative artist.
I would not want to live in a country that would have me as a leader in any sort of political bent.
What we’re doing with Band of Brothers is trying to put it into human terms, so it is not just a flickering, black and white myth on a screen, it is a resonant story. I want the audience to recognize themselves in these men. They’re not just mythic heroes.
I’m not a smart man, but I know what love is.