With 'Letters from Iwo Jima,' then 'Memories of Tomorrow,' I reached a sort of turning point in my acting. I had poured so much of myself into those movies that I really had no idea where to go from there.
I like emotional horror. I don't like horror movies. I hate them. But, if you can make emotional horror movies, I'm in. If I can care and root for the main character, then I'm in.
I've done so many Lifetime movies; at this point, I'll be going through airport security, and the lady there will be like, 'I took the weekend off and I saw four of your movies.' And I say: 'You've been watching Lifetime, right?'
I got it into my head that I was going to be starring in movies that I wrote, so that's what I did. I stopped acting in all things, and I wrote my first script, which was optioned a week after I finished it.
The person that made me want to make movies, and the reason I do films, is Bruce Lee. He was an incredible actor, and he had a lot of charisma. Handsome, action, you know, everything was there. I loved Bruce Lee.
The movies that made me want to make movies were action movies, and thrillers, and Kurosawa films, you know, where you have an opportunity every day to shoot it in an unusual way. I was looking for something like that.
When you do a first movie, you're contractually supposed to do the second one and then you don't do it, you become an executive producer. That's why there are a ton of directors who have executive producer credits on other movies.
In the theater, it's a visceral and physical response because you move around so much. You have to do something physical to pull you in. On TV or in movies, everything is so small. You can just lock into a character and ease yourself into that way.
When I was a kid, I was into psychological thrillers. When I was 12, my favorite movie was 'Thirteen.' I just really liked movies that showed an extreme range in acting. That's what made me want to become an actress.
I started in theater; I did theater in New York for 14 years before I even thought about doing movies - I never thought about being in a film; it just never occurred to me.
I've always loved the Bond pictures. I have watched every single one. Movies don't get bigger or better than Bond, so I knew this was my opportunity to do a massive action picture with outrageous stunts.
I didn't know anything about movies or movie stars or the Academy or anything. I was just a blank sheet of paper. I was totally ignorant of all that stuff. I never went to the movies, didn't know anything about the movies.
I like to think of my books and the movies of my books living in two separate universes. Each is very nice, but only one is correct - the book. But that doesn't mean you can't enjoy the other versions, and I always do.
I met the Colonel when Elvis was recording some song I'd written for one of his movies. Elvis was just having fun with the gang and all the Memphis boys and Colonel Parker was sitting over here in like a theater seat.
I never wanted to do the same kind of movies over and over anyway, so my theory on it all is I'm just gonna try and dodge the label and keep doing what I am doing.
I want to have some effect on the way the world works in whatever way I can, and I also want to have the power to help get the movies that I think are important made.
Barbra Streisand is without a doubt one of the most honest people I have ever known. There is no doubt in my mind that she will not be doing any more concerts. Of course, she still will be making records and starring and directing in movies.
This is the problem with language, and this is what makes silent movies fun, because the connection with them, me or the audience is not with the language. There's no question of interpretation of what we are saying it's just about feeling. You creat...
Well, it was actually - I brought the idea of doing a documentary to HBO back in 2000, when there were some press reports sort of were bandied about that there were going to TV movies based on some of the books that were out.
It's very weird about movies: you never know which ones are going to stay alive and which one are going to be meaningless. When you're there, you couldn't possibly predict it. Some things slowly die, and others slowly stay a while.
Stand-up keeps you on your toes because it's instant. With TV and movies, you have to wait for the numbers to come in to see what happened at the box office. With stand-up, it's right there, that night, in your face.
