Movie-making is serious business. The director and the crew are already under a lot of pressure to give their best to the audience. Therefore, the best part for me as an actor is to act well in the movies and make a jolly atmosphere with the co-stars...
I love producing. My dream as a producer is to be able to build a company that can be a safe haven for artists, for directors and for writers and actors to do what they do best and let them have final edit. I'd like to build something to that effect.
Tony Scott was one of the best directors I've ever worked with, and I was devastated when I heard about his death. He was a great guy with great energy. But this is a difficult business, and people's lives are sometimes difficult.
I have only recently got interested in film, and it is a strange way of working in many ways. But actually, when it is at its best, it's quite an extraordinary way of working between a director and an actor, to really explore an inner life.
Every time I work with a European director, I find they hire the person that captures the spirit of the role. Americans tend to hire the best face. The person that looks more like the role, whether they can perform the role or not is a bonus.
I don't think many actors are the best judge of careers. I think generally we have good instincts about what we can do in terms of acting. And often they become directors, which I don't want to be.
Some of my best experiences are with writer/directors. Guy Ritchie is one. I feel they have a clearer view of what they want to do. They haven't got to try and interpret someone's writing; it's all theirs. I really admire that.
As somebody who makes his living in the movie business and wants to contribute to it, I think that the best chance I have of doing that is just consistently working with great directors.
When you look at the early-'30s movies, like King Kong, the codes of acting are very similar to those of silent movies. In some of the silent movies - the good ones, the ones done by the best directors - the acting is very, very natural.
I never made the movies for the critics; I've done the best I could with the material and the directors and the actors I had. But the thing that's really exciting is that once I do that one project that's different, that stands out, everyone's gonna ...
In acting, you are fulfilled if you give justice to your role... if you are able to do a credible performance and touch the audience. Same with directing. If you are able to draw out the best from your actors, then you fulfill your job as a director.
One has the responsibility to oneself, to the writer, director and the people who put up the money, to put out the best of what one has experienced and understood about the human condition as it relates to the role one has been hired to portray.
As a director, I've been able to combine with what I've learned as an actor and as a producer: it melds quite nicely into what I feel like I should have been doing all along.
I've stood up to producers before, and even a director. I saw them being abusive. A lot of people on the set are scared to say stuff when they're not being treated right.
Don't get me wrong: I'm overjoyed with my career to date. But perhaps I could have done more. Mostly, I just did whatever the directors told me to do.
I got an internship with the casting director of The Girl Next Door. I would hold the clipboard and help them in their casting sessions and get them lunch.
The challenge to me as a director was for the audience to see the film as going on in a straight line, so that they did not sense all of these break-ups. I did not want a film to be a collage of all these images.
If I had not been successful as a director, then I'm sure I would still be telling stories. I would have continued on 16mm or found a different medium through which to tell them.
I've been fortunate in my career to have the opportunity to pick and choose the parts I play. I've also been lucky to always be involved with quality actors, quality directors, quality writers.
Quentin Tarantino was fantastic. I mean, he can be almost unbearable as a person. At a party, you can't get a word in edgewise for, like, an hour. But as a director, he is so completely open and just... present.
I was a VP of marketing, I was regional sales manager in fashion, and marketing director in communications and product development. I was always a corporate Fortune 500 girl.
