For me, my films are not like my children. They are like my ex-wife. They gave me so much; I gave them so much; I loved them so much; we part ways, and it's OK, we part ways.
For myself, I would rather take less roles and be working on films that I'm passionate about, that are going to challenge me and that I'm going to be growing from. I don't ever want to take a movie just for the sake of working.
If somebody had started on a remake of French Kiss before I announced my own film, I would have dropped my subject. If someone else starts after me, what am I to do?
Once you do something violent in a film, you don't have to do too much. You do it once and the feeling of violence just stays there, do you know what I'm saying?
Film scores are often based on short themes, and it helps if you've got some way of developing these themes and making them sometimes last 4 minutes and sometimes last 40 seconds. One ends up doing it subconsciously.
I quite like post-apocalyptic films, things like 'Mad Max' for instance, because they are so full on and there is something quite cleansing about the post-apocalyptic because you can see where we all think we're heading.
I would never want to do something just for the sake of being independent or for the sake of doing big films. I'm always surprised by the material I'm attracted to. And that's how I like it. I like to be surprised.
Think about trailers you see in theaters. If you're seeing a Warner Bros film, the studio might have three of the five trailers. So having a hit helps you create the next hit.
Unless you're trying to make a movie on the sly, there's no way to get around this. If you want to use public spaces, film on the streets, have the cooperation of the police, you have to have a permit.
I would tell filmmakers: 'Don't just be seduced by the same old, same old. There are interesting things you can explore that may get your film out there to audiences better than the traditional distribution mechanisms.'
I don't have anything saying, 'I'm going to do this many new films, and this many comedies.' But, it's always exciting for me, whenever it is a new character and something I haven't done before, and that's part of what draws me to it.
If you catch me coming out of a film, when I'm emotionally involved, I can tell you at that moment why I like it - but to talk about it years later is not logical to me.
I think right after 'Up in the Air' everyone wanted me to play the girl from 'Up in the Air,' and it took a little while for people to think of me as an actress from a film that they liked instead of just that character.
After making a movie, maybe you weren't able to shoot many of your ideas, because a movie is only 1 1/2 or two hours long, but TV gives you space to film a lot of things.
Many times when you make a movie, it feels like your biggest mistake. But even if a film isn't a hit, you shouldn't view it as a mistake.
In a sense, 'Schmidt' is the most Omaha of my films. But have I gotten it right? I'm not sure. Did Fellini get Rome right? Did Ozu get Tokyo right?
But it's just that the whole country is making generally lousy films these days and has been for quite a while. That's the big problem that we all have to think about.
With independent film, as an actor, you have more involvement - it's very much more connected. It's not just like I'm showing up and there's another actor on the call sheet; you're very attached to it.
For film and games, there is now a fantastic method of actors portraying characters which don't necessarily look like themselves. And yet you've still got the heart and soul of the performance.
People think, 'Oh, well how can 'The Hobbit,' which is one book, become three films?' But you can take one line from an appendice and it turns into a whole sequence.
My friend James Cameron and I made three films together - True Lies, The Terminator and Terminator 2. Of course, that was during his early, low-budget, art-house period.