I still need the camera because it is the only reason anyone is talking to me.
I love being on stage or in front of the camera. My work brings me a lot of joy. It helps me figure out who I am. I’m really lucky that I get to make a living at acting.
With voice overs… you’re not thinking about the camera. So your voice becomes this thing that you can manipulate. And depending on the character you’re doing, it’s all concentration on your voice.
No matter how long a break you take, an actor does feel comfortable in front of the camera.
It is totally different making films in the East than in the West. In the East, I make my own Jackie Chan films, and it’s like my family. Sometimes I pick up the camera because I choreograph all the fighting scenes, even when I’m not fighting. I don’t have my own chair. I just sit on the set with everybody.
Nowadays, everyone has a camera phone, and you have to be careful about being caught out there looking crazy and ending up on the Internet.
I always have a camera now that I’ve got a kid, but I don’t think I’ve got one picture of anyone other than my daughter.
I don’t think a camera and a cameraman can destroy a family.
I made the intentional choice to step behind the camera.
All I need is a camera and I’ll make things happen.
This camera works like photosynthesis. It is as if you were Xeroxing your own face. The pictures have such physicality: their surface is like fine leather, stained from chemicals. Each one has a body and is more than an image.
No one was jumping up and saying, ‘Yeah, let me give you money.’ I had never held a camera in my hand – a home video camera, nothing. I had not directed.
My acting technique is to look up at God just before the camera rolls and say, ‘Give me a break.’
One of the defining things about my career on camera is I like to play different characters. That gets difficult to do. People don’t trust you to do something different. In animation, it’s all about trust and how far can you go away from yourself. It’s a really marvelous environment that’s extremely creative.
Acting, to me, is being given the freedom and ability to play, and that’s – that’s what I love most about it. I feel very comfortable in playing, whether it be in front of a camera or on stage.
I always considered, with every shoot, I was on trial; every time I pick up my camera and start out on the relationship, I am at degree zero. There is no coasting.
You can always tell in a movie when they are setting you up for something. If someone leaves an important object on the table and walks away, the camera will have some way of indicating that to you.
Television is a prisoner of dialogue and steady-cam. People walk down a hall, and the camera follows them around a corner.
My love of performing goes way back. My mom got me on ‘Romper Room’ when I was five – it was my favorite show. But they couldn’t control me. I would run up and smack the camera, and I’d jump around and do my little flips and routines. I wish I could get that tape now.
I was inspired to become an actor from theater I’d seen, so I assumed I’d do a lot of theater. But when I left Guidhall, the first thing I did was a short film – I played the main character. And I loved it. I love working on camera. I love the smallness of it and the detail and the routine of it.
As I started to develop as a director, I wanted to do projects that were inherently more cinematic, where the freight was not so much in the dialogue, where it would be carried more by the camera.
I always carry my camera with me.
Anytime you’re on camera, 95 percent of whatever character you’re playing, unless you’re Daniel Day-Lewis – or maybe, no, pretty much just him – you’re cast because you’re you.
When I’m on an adult set and I’m in a scene, I am myself. I’m not acting. I am playing to the camera, definitely, but I am myself.
I can’t hold a camera anymore.
