I didn’t want to play a rancher. I didn’t want to have a cowboy hat on; I wanted to get away from that in the things I do. But I read the script and fell in love with it. As hard as I tried to say no, I couldn’t.
I find it easier to play someone who is so far from me because you create someone – you build this person based on the story and the script, with the director.
I don’t care about names attached to the script. That doesn’t matter to me. All things being equal, I would like to work with a good script with a good director, and the part I play is of less important than those two factors.
I didn’t want to do ‘Casino Royale’ when they told me to audition. I said no. Then they sent me the script, and I thought it was actually very interesting – and I had no other work at the time.
We would change out of costume, then we would read the next days script.
On ’24,’ it says on the front page of your script: ‘This script is for the production staff and cast. Please don’t show it to anybody else.’
My friends, we all improvise together usually. So we write what I think is a good script but always leave a lot of room to find stuff on the day; and we always do find something. That’s the advantage to having actors who are, in their own right, writers.
In America, everyone writes but no one reads. Everyone’s writing all day long – sending emails, tweets, text messages; they all think they’re James Cameron’s Avatar, performing in some video game for which they make up the script.
Changes are required as far as scripts are concerned. People need to open up and experiment in story lines. But we don’t have good script writers, producers or directors. The Punjabi industry lacks cinema knowledge and professionalism. It is the saddest part.
I couldn’t say no to jobs and I couldn’t say no to drugs. I’d get high from a movie, I’d be somebody else because I didn’t particularly like me, so long as I had a script in my hand, I was okay. As soon as the movie was over, I didn’t know what to do.
I honestly have no strategy whatsoever. I’m waiting for that script to pop through the letterbox and completely surprise me.
But my family’s really close and I was interested in what Mommy and Daddy did for a living. So when Mommy and Daddy had a script that wasn’t totally age inappropriate, they would let me read it. And we would talk about it.
I would consider doing any part as long as the script is good and the film has an interesting director.
I like to begin every screenplay with a burst of delusional self-confidence. It tends to fade pretty quickly, but (for me, at least) there doesn’t seem to be any other way to start writing a script.
‘Liberace’s a great film. It’s a great piece of material. I have a great script and it’s a great score.
If I do do a sequel, I’m going to have to know for sure that the script is better than the original. So I’m going to be very careful about that because I’m not eager to repeat myself.
Once, I optioned a novel and tried to do a screenplay on it, which was great fun, but I was too respectful. I was only 100 pages into the novel and I had about 90 pages of movie script going. I realized I had a lot to learn.
I’ve also worked hard portraying an Ireland which is fast disappearing. Ireland was a very depressed and difficult place in the 1980s, and I’ve tried to include that in the script. I worked really hard to find the heart of the book.
Filming a movie is different from a TV show because film is a lot quicker, you get to see the character progress and grow all in one script, and in television, you wait for a weekly update on each character.
I find it really hard to even read another script while shooting.
‘V’ had just been cancelled; I was looking for a job, and the ‘Homeland’ script came across my desk. I loved it immediately, although I thought it would end up being discovered gradually – a slow-burner, like ‘The Wire.’
I wasn’t involved, except to the degree that they sent me drafts of the script as the writer turned them in. They asked me at one point to write a memo about what I thought of it.
We taped all this and then got it transcribed and picked the best lines or ideas or ways to take a scene. I’ve done that many times, and it can improve the script but also wreck a perfectly good scene.
You can have a great script, and it can be a great show, but for whatever reason, it just doesn’t take the public’s interest.
I am open to working with new directors as long as the script excites me.
I’m a big ‘Breaking Bad’ fan – if I’m not in the script, I like to experience the show with the rest of the world. I’m ready to be shocked.
I’m never certain of a performance – my own or the other actors’ – or the script or anything… But to me it seems there’s only one place in the world the camera can be, and the decision usually comes immediately.
Once I’m committed to a role, I will go very deep into it, even when I’m not at work. I’ll keep on studying the script, maybe 40 or 50 times. I might call a scriptwriter at three in the morning to say I’ve thought of something new.
I regret not doing a film that I was offered with Clark Gable because the script was not good enough.
I get involved with projects based on three parameters – the script, the actors involved and the director.
If the script grabs me and appeals to me, I’m really very keen to work on it.
Anyway, he and I worked on the script together, and I must say he was a joy to work with. Very enthusiastic.
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.
I wrote the script of Patton. I had this very bizarre opening where he stands up in front of an American flag and gives this speech. Ultimately, I was fired. When the script was done, they hired another writer and that script was forgotten.
I keep every script from every film that I ever made because it’s like a workbook of that time in my life.
Because I used to go and watch him rehearsing for pantomime, and I have adopted some of those priciples, like try to be on time, learn your script, how he approach it, etc.
A script is utterly useless in and of itself; it’s only of any worth the minute your actors, your designers, your directors come into being.
All this flying around got on my nerves. But then I gave the script to Cathy to get her opinion. When she started to laugh, it was like ‘That’s it!’. I went to LA and I got the part.
Of course, I’m not allowed to talk about the script, but I can say it is a really good story.
Sometimes you do feel a script that glows in your hand the moment you start reading it. By page four of Shakespeare in Love, I said, ‘I have to be in this movie.’
I love involving actors at all levels – and they have to know that I want to hear their contributions, with dialogue, with story suggestions, with script changes, whatever.
In some instances, I would say the writer does deserve equal billing with the director. In other instances the director – especially if he wrote part of the script himself – is clearly more the author of the movie.
If the script is boring when I read it, I am sure it would be boring onscreen, too.
My manager got the script for ‘Under the Dome,’ and I read it and just fell in love with the character. I grew up on Stephen King, and I love his whole aesthetic of the classic American story with supernatural events happening, so it just made sense.
Sometimes you take a job for the money, sometimes you take it for the location, sometimes you take it for the script; there are just a number of reasons, and ultimately what you see is the whole landscape of it. But I can tell you from behind the scenes – that’s what it is, as an actor.
The best script in the world doesn’t work perfectly when you actually act it out. That’s a law. That’s a given. So you have to play with everything. And the more fun you have with it, the better the finished product.
A good project but a poor director will always make a mediocre film, but an average script and good director can make a good film, as he will put in everything to make the film look good.
The weird thing is, if I’d made ‘The Incredibles,’ shot-for-shot – exactly the same script, same timing, same shots – in live action, it would be perceived very differently, and somehow more adult than me doing it in animation. I find that fascinating and frustrating.
Sometimes when it comes to the iconic kind of moments, when I read the script for the first time, you get little goose bumps or something because it really is kind of exciting.
I’ve seen a lot of friends who have a lot of great projects, whether it’s a script or a play or whatever, and it is a great project and they have great people involved, and they can’t make it.
What really makes it fun for an actor is when the script is good.
We really love all sports, but we don’t think in the long term. The reason we did Kingpin was because there was a script we really liked and we saw the possibilities.
What they told us about ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ when we first started was that we were guaranteed 26 episodes, so that was the longest job I’ve ever had. And that was basically it – we didn’t know what the premise of the show was going to be and we waited, week by week, to see a script.
