If you look at the paths of other actors, most people have a curve where you hit it and there's a time where you make a lot of money and they let you make your movies, and then they take it away and it's gone.
What counts in Hollywood is box office. It doesn't really matter what people think of you as an actor because, as long as you have been in a movie that has made money, you will always get another job.
I've never been that much of a money guy. I'm more of a film guy, and most of the money I've made is in defense of trying to keep creative control of my movies.
The one thing I am very strict about is that I don't like spending a lot of money on movies because the more money you spend, I think the worse that they get.
HATE, even if it's making money. is an underground movie, that's how it was made. It's a film about police brutality in the largest sense, it's about the whole of society and not just about the hood.
I go to movies and concerts and stuff - that's why I think all my money would be gone if I weren't working because I just keep spending it, on that, and CDs, and I don't know.
I've had it happen to me before where it turns out that they never had the money and couldn't have made the movie in the first place. And these are the things you have to look for when trying to read the behavior of the people you sit down with.
The money part is one of the most difficult things. Coppola always said I should do a tango movie. If it hadn't been for him, I don't know where we would have gotten the money.
My criteria for doing theater has always been slightly different than my criteria with movies, in that there are a lot of reasons to do films, having to do with location, money, and first and foremost having to do with script and role and director.
All studio movies are the middle of the Bell curve. The only way to do something is to do it yourself. And the only way to do that is to not take any money from anyone or take as little money as possible from anyone and that's it.
Sometimes you look at a movie and you can see that the actor or actress said, 'I'm taking this onboard because I'm making a ton of money, and not because it's going to be something special.'
I know the responsibility that entails from telling a story. The one thing I despise the most is when I go to a movie and I see a whole bunch of lazy actors making me waste my time and money.
Show me a Scorsese film, and I'll show you a movie where he's taken risks. It's just his nature. He's an artist, and artists take risks. He always does what he believes in.
No matter how successful you get in Hollywood, you cannot rest. Your new movie doesn't open well; they're looking for the next person to replace you; it's always something. You never have true peace.
For working with non-professional actors, you have to have this particular desire to work with people who are reluctant to play in a movie. I like this relationship. I'm like a recruiter, an employment agency giving someone employment.
I know it's hard to blame the time, but there's a bit of an expectation for a summer movie. I think that 'Superman Returns' was a bit nostalgic and romantic, and I don't think that was what people were expecting, especially in the summer.
For me, the performance was always playing different people. And so when I got older, was no longer the romantic leading movie star, it became more and more interesting for me, the characters I played, you know?
We tried to approach this as though there's never been a Superman movie before, but at the same time respecting the canon and mythology. There are the pillars that you have to respect, and I'm not about to break them. But it is fun for me to bend the...
You know, they just don't make big movie stars the way they used to, maybe because the system has changed, the studio system, but it's sad to see people like Jimmy Stewart go, all the giants of the past.
After the enormous success of All About my Mother, all the awards and everything, I wanted to start a movie in exactly the same place that I used to be before. I wanted to show that all of the success had not changed my perception.
I have to admit that when I watch a movie in which there is no moral context for the violence - I find that offensive. I think that's potentially damaging to society.
