Making a movie is a network of decisions that keep multiplying as you go. You leave a trail of decisions behind you, and that’s how you start to see the shape of what you’ve done. When you get far enough, you turn around and say, ‘Ha, that’s the movie.’ It’s only then that you find out if it’s going to work or not.
Look at any black-and-white movie; everybody is smoking.
Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied… That’s why they can keep on working. I’ve been able to work for so long because I think next time, I’ll make something good.
I was in a movie called ‘Flirting With Disaster’ with Ben Stiller. I realized that I am really not a good actor and not something I wanted to pursue.
The little bit of buzz around ‘Warrior’ led to a lot of opportunities anyway, before the movie even came out.
I’d love to make a horror movie, that’s definitely where I want to be one day.
One of the first guys I ever played golf with was Samuel L. Jackson. We did a movie many years ago and would play whenever we could.
I don’t read the reviews because it somewhere affects my work. If some critic doesn’t like a movie, I can’t keep his criticisms in mind the next time I am making a film. Even if someone writes a great review about my film, I don’t want to be affected by it.
My favourite thing in the world is going out to get Chinese food, then coming home and renting a movie.
When it was announced I had won the Tony Award, I was in Bangkok doing a movie with Judi Dench. I remember coming back from the location to the Oriental Hotel and hearing someone yelling across the reception area, ‘You’ve won the Tony!’ It was wonderful and strange to be halfway around the world.
The nice thing about a horror movie is that people go in looking to be unsettled.
When you’re making a movie, it’s a very interiorised world.
Usually, when I’m rappin’, I’m creating a big story or a concept song that sounds like a movie to me.
I want people to know that movie stars live a normal, middle-class life.
I was inspecting eyeglass lenses for a while. And I worked as a concession girl in a movie theater. And I was ironing before that. I always had some kind of a job. And then I started modeling.
I can use movie as a language. Not only could it send a good message, I could let people know about my thinking and how I see the world, how I see the colour, how I see the music, how I see everything.
When I don’t have a girlfriend, who I am answerable to, I can go out and hang with people. But whether you go for a movie with someone or a meal or a drive, it is assumed that you are dating that person.
It used to be that you kind of got pigeonholed into one thing – you’re either a stage actor or a TV actor or a movie actor. Today, there’s a lot of crossover with film actors doing television, which never happened before, so those lines are a little bit more blurred than they used to be.
Puerto Rico is beautiful. I mean, I love it. But it’s hard to film here. It’s hard to film an action movie here where you’re outside, and you’re running around all day.
Moon’s’ a good movie.
I always believed in if you give your best, people will see it, and it moves to the next level. I got my first movie, and I gave it my best. Before I was done with that movie, I was offered my first feature film.
If you do good work, it tends to stick around. People still come up to me and say, ‘The Ref’ is my favorite Christmas movie.’
How do I let the director know how obsessed I am and willing to do anything for the movie? Like, I wanted to write this one director a letter, so I wrote him a handwritten note. But then I was like, ‘How many people are writing this guy handwritten letters? Is it going to seem cheesy? What do I do?’
You don’t make a movie, the movie makes you.
I had a Taco Bell audition where I had to wear a huge sombrero and walk around like an idiot. I got call-backs for the movie ‘Twister,’ did small independent stuff that I won’t name. But it led to all my breakthrough moments on ‘Entourage.’
‘Infernal Affairs’ is really amazing and was a really popular movie. I would be fine with playing any character in the movie.
I dyed my hair blonde in that movie, so my head doesn’t match my grill.
I am a genre lover – everything from spaghetti western to samurai movie.
I think people are used to seeing actors be wide open and desperately giving of themselves, and while I do that on a movie set as much as I can, it’s so unnatural for me to do it on television, in interviews, in anything like that. I also don’t find that my process as an actor is really anyone else’s business.
I was never that into the movies. Never. Even as a youngster. I became interested in movie music only because of the studio orchestras in Hollywood.
If you want to just make a good movie, if you don’t enjoy every step and become a master of each little moment, then you shouldn’t be doing it.
It’s so much easier when you’re promoting a movie that you like!
Really, with ‘Water Lilies’, the project was to end the movie where other movies would begin.
I never go outside unless I look like Joan Crawford the movie star. If you want to see the girl next door, go next door.
In the original ‘Star Wars’ movie, there is a small toaster-sized and shaped robot on the Death Star that guides Stormtroopers to where they need to go. I always liked that robot because I could imagine how to build it – and it served a real purpose.
I went to Phoenix, Arizona for ‘Angel Unchained,’ and they’d hire the bike gang from Phoenix to be extras in the movie.
I’ve read every one of Donald Goines’ books. So as soon as I heard there was an opportunity for one of his novels to be turned into a movie, I jumped at the opportunity.
I’ve always had the luck or blessing that someone would say, ‘I liked what you did in that movie. I’d like you to be in my movie.’
Well, you know, I never want to feel like I have a set plan of what I’m supposed to do. I kind of like to go script by script, and if I like the character and like the story that’s why I want to do a movie.
There’s nothing I’ve ever worked on that beat ‘Game of Thrones’ – that’s a 10-hour movie; they put a lot of money in it.
In a normal movie, you’d never see one guy talk for an entire page, whether good or bad.
I was offered the Gene Hackman role in ‘The Poseidon Adventure’ four times, and I turned it down four times. I didn’t want to do that movie. I called it the upside down boat.
I try to watch a movie a day, if not more, and through movies, I learned about so many different political themes I hadn’t been interested in and cultural things I hadn’t been aware of and economic factors I hadn’t thought about.
I had a lot of coaching for the movie and no, I have never sung professionally before.
The whole question of fiduciary responsibility is a very old concept. You could make a movie about someone making that rule at any point in history, and within a few months, it will turn out to be timely.
I saw ‘The Shining’ in eighth grade. I watched it on VHS at a sleepover and was petrified, totally petrified. And I didn’t really start to digest the movie properly and understand it from a filmmaking perspective until I got older. But it pretty much defined what it meant to be scared of a movie for me.
You remember Donnie Brasco? It’s the most notorious undercover movie ever; it’s so street and so real. If you ever imagined yourself doing cop work, you imagined yourself getting pushed to that limit – seeing the furthest you can push yourself while still upholding the law.
Lalitham Sundaram’ is a simple family movie that has a positive feel.
When I did my first Hindi film, ‘Sargam,’ I had to play a dumb girl. Critics went to town saying that since I was a south Indian and didn’t know how to speak Hindi, producers of the movie decided to make me play dumb.
I don’t have real big aspirations to be a movie star. I would love to be on a long-running hit TV show. You end up playing a defining role.
I saw ‘Joy Luck Club’ when it came out, so that was early mid-’90s, and I remember seeing it with my long-time collaborator, Mina Shum. We’d just done ‘Double Happiness,’ and we saw this movie, and we were weeping. Like, shuddering weeping. Weeping more than really the film deserved.
In 1984, I starred in ‘Greystoke: The Legend Of Tarzan,’ my first movie. My lines ended up being dubbed by Glenn Close, supposedly because my accent was ‘too southern’. It was completely humiliating at the time. I became a laughing stock. I’m amazed that I managed to pick myself up and dust myself off.
We have been influenced by you in the U.S. a lot. Not because anybody exerted pressure on us – if anyone puts pressure on us, we go the other way. But if you put a movie in the cinema and I watch it, I will be influenced.
You can’t please everyone… If you make a good movie, that’s all that matters.
When you find something where you can give people a message and still make it an exciting movie, you get very, very excited about something. You probably even work harder than you normally do.
And in a world without heroes, as the movie trailer voice-over guy might say, the slightly awkward can be slightly cool.
You can’t look at the dollar and say, ‘I’m not what I dreamed of being unless I do this type of movie and it’s a blockbuster that gives me this amount of dollars.’ That’s not good.
