I grew up on certain movies, particular movies that said something to me as a kid from Missouri, movies that showed me places I'd yet traveled, or different cultures, or explained something, or said something in a better way than I could ever say. I ...
My grandmother and I would go see movies, and we'd come back to the apartment - we had a one-room apartment in Hollywood - and I would kind of lock myself in this little dressing room area with a cracked mirror on the door and act out what I had just...
I never really thought about myself being in really big movies at all. In fact, I always though I'd do, I don't know, smaller movies is not quite the right word, but more character-oriented, dramatic things. I took myself a little bit seriously.
Actors are steeped in a world of agents and where the next job is coming from and what are their expenses and what is the hotel like. You want to take them out of that world and dump them into another world, so that when you meet them on the screen t...
I've been very lucky enough to do all kinds of movies. All the movies that I've done have been very different, and all the characters I've done have been very different. I feel very lucky to have been able to do the movies that I've done.
I actually watched 'Lord of the Rings' right when it came out, so maybe 2001 or 2002 or whenever that was. But I watched those movies, and I ended up loving them so much that I found every behind-the-scenes feature and every sort of 'making-of' clip ...
I grew up watching old black and white movies where Marlene Dietrich or Jean Harlow would go walking down some cobblestone street in ripped stockings and head into some smoky boite and sing for a pathetic living. That's so what I wanted to be.
I like to take risks and do weird things and stuff that's not normal compared to other Hollywood movies. Not stuff that's totally avant garde and daring, but doing stuff that's in other languages and not using stars and using real people - things tha...
When I decided to go to L.A. I said I was going to quit modelling and just go and see how I do. In the first two weeks I got three movies. I was so excited I had all my furniture shipped out from New York.
Everybody gets typecast in movies, but you have to make wise choices. I'd say around 90 percent of movie casting is about the way you look, so you have to fight that. If producers had their way, I'd only be in action films, but I'm interested in a mo...
In Malaysia, where Western culture was extremely influential, I'd grown up listening to Elvis and the Beatles and watching American movies. People wanted to be like Americans. In contrast, when I got here, I saw prosperous middle-class American colle...
I didn't go to film school. My Grampa always says just watch a lot of movies. He didn't go to film school; he went to theatre school. It's interesting to learn about the technical side of it, but I think it's more important to learn about writing and...
I always wish the hotels were like they are in movies and TV shows, where if you're in Paris, right outside your window is the Eiffel Tower. In Egypt, the pyramids are right there. In the movies, every hotel has a monument right outside your window. ...
I loved all those classic figures from the '30s and '40s... Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Humphrey Bogart, Rita Hayworth. They had such glamour and style. I loved the movies of those times too - so much attention paid to details, lights, clothing, the ...
I hadn't made a big-budget film, and in Hollywood there's a sort of man and boys situation. You're a man, you make $80 million movies! As if it's harder to make an $80 million movie. Well, I guess businesswise it is because you have more executives t...
I was a huge fan of comedy and movies and TV growing up, and I was able to memorize and mimic a lot of things, not realizing that that meant I probably wanted to be an actor. I just really, really amused myself and my friends with memorizing entire G...
I never cared about making one coherent masterpiece with a conventional narrative. I always wanted my movies to have images falling from all directions in a vaudevillian way. If you didn't like what was happening in one scene, you could just snooze t...
I tried working odd jobs that had nothing to do with creating, and it was difficult for me. In the end, I just always loved movies. When I'm making a film, I feel most alive, like I'm doing the right thing, and I'm in the place where I need to be.
When we talk about Oscars, it's almost as a symbol of excellence, and the American public and the worldwide public accept that symbol. So, a movie like 'The Artist' that costs $14 million, has to go out and compete with movies that cost $140 million....
I came to N.Y.C. in 1988 and got very involved with Act Up. I also started making movies, including two very gay shorts, 'Vaudeville' and 'Lady.' It was the height of the AIDS epidemic, and New York City was both dying and very alive at the same time...
When I was a little kid - and even still - I loved magic tricks. When I saw how movies got made - at least had a glimpse when I went on the Universal Studios tour with my grandfather, I remember feeling like this was another means by which I could do...
