I was very fortunate in having David Fincher, the director come to me. Now I've seen the finished product, I feel that every bit of the nine months we spent on the film was worth it.
Every different director has another language - for instance, Hitchcock does not like any bright color ever, unless the story says 'there goes the girl in a red dress.'
I am tired of kissing on screen. I have to do it because it is synonymous with me. Also, the producers and directors want to add that element. I don't give it too much importance.
I moved out to L.A. to be a filmmaker or director. I didn't even think about doing comedy or even acting. I wanted to be like Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson, but I wasn't going to a lot of comedy.
There's a whole system in Hollywood where the director never speaks to the studio, but I like to engage them in a discussion. I listen.
Everyone can do a character the way they want to do it, unless the director tells them not to, which isn't very common. I like to do my characters, if it's not specific in the script, as myself.
If someone suddenly lost their director the day before shooting and wanted me to step in, I'd be willing to. But I'd do brain surgery the same way. I'm always up for something new.
Some directors expect you to do everything; write, be producer, psychiatrist. Some just want you to die in a tragic accident during the shooting so they can get the insurance.
After all, at end of the day, when you're breathing your last, it's not your producer, director, or cast mates by your bedside; it's your children. Keep that in mind.
In a career, when you hit 40 and you've done a lot of this and that, you want to try some new things. I feel like that as a director, too, from one film to the other.
As you follow the escapades or the journey of the hero through a story, it evokes some kind of emotion in the viewers. The director's job is to make sure that the audience goes through the journey and has an emotional reaction.
I grew up the son of a director and grew up on sets myself, so I was the kid getting dragged around from this set to that set and I loved it. There's something about it which is really interesting.
With a musical, you kind of have to do a mind-meld with the book-writer, the lyricist, the composer, the director - sometimes the producer. I think that's a reason why musicals are the hardest form.
You have to pretend to live in those clothes that they lived in, to live within the climate that they had then. You have to imagine with the help, obviously, of all the other technicians that are around - the writer, the director, the other actors.
When I came out here, my manager thought that casting directors might think I'm a girl, and when I did Threat Matrix, they thought Jamie was a little light.
I was six years old when I saw my first Godard movie, eight when I first experienced Bergman. I wanted to be a director when I was fourteen.
When I sign on for a project, I'm there to give the director all the material he or she might need to tell their story, and that's the number one priority.
We are the only school in America, drama school in America that trains actors, writers and directors side by side for three years in a master's degree program, and we want them - to expose them to everything.
In a rehearsal room, your real resource as an actor aren't the things around you; your resources are your imagination and your director and the other actors. In those close quarters, your imagination and your skills are what you turn to.
By the time I came to the States, I really understood how a magazine works. I came to 'Vogue' as creative director, and three years later I went back to London to be editor in chief of British 'Vogue.'
What I always meant by that was that I do believe that a lot of directors, and writers, and sometimes producers just lose their edge because they haven't seen anybody or talked to anybody or been with anybody who isn't a kind of replica of themselves...
