When you’re a movie star and you’re young, you are always playing someone who’s a better fighter, a better lover, a better everything than you.
‘Analyze This’ is a good movie because Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal are really good. But without the material to put on the play, of course, they couldn’t be good. For me, it starts with the writing. I always think that the writer is doing the vast majority of the director’s work, in a sense.
I’ve spent many birthdays on a movie set, all great days.
I had to skydive for the movie and I was terrified. Like everybody, I thought it was going to be one of those experiences that changes your life. It didn’t.
I like making stories and characters that people can relate to. I also like giving the audience a departure from whatever they’re thinking about in their life and enjoying a show or a movie.
My all-time favorite movie ever is definitely the ‘Twilight’ series.
You become so obsessed, and that’s not a bad thing for a movie. Serve it with that sense that it’s the whole world.
I’m used to the fact that the world views movie actors as personalities. I’m in the extremely fortunate position of making a living at something I’m passionate about. It’s all about choices. By the nature of what I do, I make a choice. I invite them in.
Sometimes a movie encapsulates a period or a moment in all of our lives in such a way that it never dies.
When it comes to casting for movies, it is a priority that you cast right. The guiding principle must be what is right for the movie, that is the basis you cast someone, not because so-and-so is a friend.
As somebody who makes his living in the movie business and wants to contribute to it, I think that the best chance I have of doing that is just consistently working with great directors.
Usually when I’m making a movie, what I have in mind first, for the visuals, is how we can stage the scenes to bring them more to life in the most interesting way, and then how we can make a world for the story that the audience hasn’t quite been in before.
I speak some Spanish. I would love to go make a movie in Spanish. I’d love to be in an Almodovar movie or an Inarritu.
I’m a guy, but I’m not afraid to cry. Not all of the time. But when I’m watching a movie, I’ll sometimes shed a tear, especially ‘Moulin Rouge’.
I steal from every movie ever made.
I don’t know why people are so obsessed with finding out stuff before the movie comes out. It’s so much more fun to just go. I mean, I don’t do that. I don’t go looking for stuff that I’m interested in, you know, to try and find out pictures and what the movie’s about. It’s so much more fun to be surprised.
I think when you come from a reality show, nobody really respects you from the movie industry or from the WWE industry.
I just consider myself a committed actor. If a movie is a success, that’s great; I’m happy for that. But I’ve learned just to concentrate on my job and do the best that I can.
I’m used to having big movie cameras in my face; I pretend that they’re not there.
Every good war film, if you want to use that phrase – I don’t think it’s a good phrase, but if you want to use that phrase – every good film, a first-rate film about war, is an anti-war movie.
It’s easy for me to write a horror movie about real stuff because my mind is always going there anyway.
You make the movie through the cinematography – it sounds quite a simple idea, but it was like a huge revelation to me.
I have been an actor for most of my life. When I started out, I didn’t think about anything except what was good for me. Like many movie stars, I became all wrapped up in myself.
There was another Judy Garland movie on TV, and it wasn’t ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ and I was so confused. I was like, ‘Wait a second, what is Dorothy doing in this movie?’ And that’s when I became fascinated. I didn’t realize there were actors.
I hate a movie that will end by telling you that the first thing you should do is learn to love yourself. That is so insulting and condescending, and so meaningless. My characters don’t learn to love each other or themselves.
I loved history because to me, history was like watching a movie.
It doesn’t matter if you’re doing a studio movie or you’re doing an independent movie. When you get to set and you’re doing a scene, it’s always going to be the same job. I really don’t think about my career, in terms of planning it out and what this does for me.
I like test screenings. I like to see a movie with an audience of strangers. I think it tells you a lot.
‘Matilda’ was my favorite movie to film and my favorite to watch, as well.
People don’t care about what someone says about you in a movie – or even what you say, right? They care about what you build. And if you can make something that makes people’s life better, then that’s something that’s really good.
I’ve never felt particularly ambitious or driven, that’s for sure, although I like to create stuff, whether it’s a little doodle, a drawing, a small painting or a movie or a piece of music, so I suppose I’m driven by that. Everything I’ve done has felt very natural, and it’s happened because it’s happened.
My all-time favorite movie is ‘He Got Game.’
I grew up in an Irish Catholic family, and I think they force you to watch every James Cagney movie.
I really love ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’ – and I love the book, too. You wonder how it ever got made into a movie. She’s supposed to be chubby, and two of the hottest guys ever are straight-up fighting over her?
I’ve done lots of improv things but not a whole movie.
On ‘Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,’ I spent two or three months learning how to ride a motorcycle. I wasn’t really riding the motorcycle in 98 percent of the movie, but the shots of me getting on and off had to look like I had been doing it for years and years.
It’s pretty easy to make a film in China. A few years ago I just walked into the office and let them know I wanted to make a movie called ‘Red Cliff’ and they were so excited. They said, ‘Let’s do it!’ It’s that simple.
I have been considerably picky for somebody who’s not a movie star, and sometimes I get frustrated.
My primary goal was to make a movie with the best of my ability. It was not that I have to make the film, I have to write it, I have to produce it and I have to direct it.
It’s nice to create a character, not just within two scenes, but within the journey of a whole movie. It’s fun to do that.
If you’re a movie star, you get the girl, you lose the girl, and then you get her back. But if you’re a character like me, you lose the girl, then you get another one, then you get another one, then you lose them all, then you lose your life.
The point is that life for me is not going to be the way it is for everyone else. I have a fog machine and movie lights in my bedroom.
Obviously, ‘Lincoln’ is not about the telegraph operator. There’s a whole other movie before and after the two isolated scenes that I’m in.
Everyone wants to be a movie star or a model, to be in the papers, but few realise just what hard work it is, getting up early, and so on.
Hollywood never knew there was a Vietnam War until they made the movie.
I just try to make the best film possible, and once the movie’s done, we deal with the DVD.
‘Blue Valentine’ was a really sad movie, but I loved the moments when they’re discovering each other for the first time.
On the sets of the movie ‘Manto,’ I found that one of the challenges of embodying real-life stories is the mixed medium of facts and imagination, and how one’s collage of experiences colour ones representation on celluloid.
I would play hooky from school and spend all day in the movie theaters. Consequently, I learned satire in all its subtle forms.
I’ve been on the board of UCLA Film and TV School, and I went to UCLA. I realized that the same movie theater that was there when I went to school, 30 years later is the same movie theater in the same condition. There was an opportunity to refurbish an existing room, and I jumped at the opportunity.
My schedule is completely different doing a play than it is doing a movie, and I actually think it’s a much harder schedule because you’ve got to do it eight times a week and you’ve got to do it good eight times a week and with different kinds of audiences who are cold or drunk or tired, whatever it is.
Since I have already connected with fans on TV, I don’t fear losing out on my movie fans, even if I am away from the silver screen for a long time.
I am not a rock star or a movie star; I’m a businessperson. I definitely know who my friends are. I’m much more open and trusting than, say, my daughter is.
‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ is a good one because it not only turned out, I think, to be a really funny movie but it was also a delight to shoot. We were in the South of France, working with Glenne Headly and Michael Caine and Frank Oz the director – who were just fun.
Televison is time bound. Whereas a movie has time. You can’t write a script for television and keep it for one year.
I do genre films because I like them or because I need the money. I make a star’s salary when I do horror because I can still open a movie in Italy or Spain or Germany.
I got a role in this movie called Freeway playing this really angry, aggressive, violent young woman who believed wholeheartedly in the truth. I had such satisfaction afterward, and I thought, That’s what I want to do.
