I kind of viewed '50/ 50' and 'Warm Bodies' both as my next films after 'The Wackness.' In my head, I was just like, 'I'll try the big, fun, adventure-weird movie, and I'll do the small, heartfelt comedy-drama, and one of them will probably work out,...
Getting the role in '300' saved me. I'd been out of work for 11 months after 'The Brothers Grimm.' Once the film came out and didn't do so well, the director Terry Gilliam blamed me for absolutely everything. It was pretty appalling, and I had starte...
I'm lucky enough to be able to make films and so I don't need a psychiatrist. I can sort out my fears and all those things with my work. That's an enormous privilege. That's the privilege of all artists, to be able to sort out their unhappiness and t...
I've said this before, but after 'That '70s Show' ended, I solely wanted do films that inspire me, and to work with people who make me better. I wanted to just surround myself with people who I think are better than I am, whether they're actors or di...
I work with a group of actors, and whenever one of us has an audition, we all get together, and we all work together on it. I think it takes us back to our film school days, our drama school days, us just working together and figuring it out because ...
I was a bartender in New York and I overheard this girl saying she made $3000 doing a commercial. A kid at work told me, 'Hey, I know this director and he'd really like you!'. So I walked into this guy's office and was like 'I was thinking maybe I co...
I photographed with film for many years; now that I work in digital, the difference is enormous. The quality is unbelievable: I don't use flash, and with digital I can even work in very bad light. Also, it's a relief not to lose photographs to x-ray ...
One of the first speaking roles I had was in a film called 'Svengali', with Peter O'Toole and Elizabeth Ashley. I was a waiter, and I had about three lines. And I was ready! I had been around people like that, and I knew they were just actors. All th...
With the new technology that keeps entering the media, film composers are constantly being placed in new learning situations. Acknowledging this and realizing that one must keep up, I maintain, nonetheless, that the real creative power is in the mind...
If poor doomed Olly’s a Radio 4 play, what am I?”” “You, Hugo,” she kisses my earlobe, “are a sordid, low-budget French film. The sort you’d stumble across on TV at night. You know you’ll regret it in the morning, but you keep watchin...
A lot of film people are like that– especially the ones below the line, the blue-collar guys, the grunts. They like putting their hands on the equipment and getting it to do things for them. It's not about art or ideas. It's about working at someth...
I began auditioning for acting jobs at the ripe old age of 12. Thirty years later, including a 15-year run on television, I sometimes just get offers for work. Often, however, I am still required to run pell-mell around Los Angeles or New York, inter...
There was never any career plan. When 'Red Dwarf' started I thought we were doing a curious little sitcom on BBC2, I didn't think I was becoming an actor. I didn't see that 21 years later I'd still be talking about it, let alone filming a new one. Fo...
For me music is pretty personal. I generally listen to it alone, and I've never been a lover of concerts. So I don't think I really bond with other people over music. That's not unique to music for me, either. I feel that way about film, television, ...
I feel very strongly influenced by long-form box-set TV drama... I feel really excited that, at last, the novel has found its on-screen equivalent, because the emotional arcs and changes that you can follow are just so much more like a novel, and so ...
When we're not filming or promoting then, you know, I live two different lives. So when I'm just in Taylor's life, and I'm just, you know, at home spending time with friends, it's great, it's a totally different life than this 'Twilight' world for su...
Films for TV have to be much closer to the book, mainly because the objective with a TV movie that translates literature is to get the audience, after seeing this version, to pick up the book and read it themselves. My attitude is that TV can never r...
I make my films because I'm affected by a situation, by something that makes me want to reflect on it, that lends itself to an artistic reflection. I always aim to look directly at what I'm dealing with. I think it's a task of dramatic art to confron...
I'm a Sufi Muslim, I would say. I believe in using the medium to create a good vibration because art is so important to society. Some projects I don't do because I feel that it's going to create a bad vibe. I don't do propaganda films that are anti a...
Collaborating on a film script involves two people sitting in a room separated by the silence of two minds working together.
Hugh Laurie (playing Mr. Palmer) felt the line 'Don't palm all your abuses [of language upon me]' was possibly too rude. 'It's in the book,' I said. He didn't hit me.
