In a series, you really need to stay open-minded. It's not like a play or a film, where you can create and fully commit to your character's back-story.
I started writing and acting in these little plays and then I was discovered by Dustin Hoffman. He got me my first audition for a film he was in, called 'I Heart Huckabees.'
It's not scary to make a horror film because you get to pull back the curtain and see that none of it's real. When you're watching one, the terror bombards you.
I didn't go to classes there, but ended up at the Cinematheque, and there it opened up even wider because there I saw a variety of films from all over the world.
There are no black film composers doing the likes of Star Wars, doing the likes of E.T., doing the likes of Jurassic Park. There are none, nor will there ever be one. That ain't about to happen!
Violence is used to portray what happens in a film. It only helps portray the actors and what they do. I think it is more about the story, when you have something to play off of.
My father was a big Bruce Lee fan. He's Chinese-Hawaiian, and my mother is Chinese. He used to take us to all these really fantastical films with martial arts in them.
There's something magical still about it when I get in a darkroom, and you've shot a roll of film and you develop it and you look at your negatives, and there's, like, imagery there. That always stuns me.
What surprised me about the Oscars was how familiar it was - because you're in the room with all these people that have inspired you from your childhood to adulthood in the film industry. It feels like you've known them all of your life.
Cinema has become my life. I don't mean a parallel world, I mean my life itself. I sometimes have the impression that the daily reality is simply there to provide material for my next film.
I have seen 'Thor', yeah. It's fantastic. Being that close to something, it's often pretty hard to watch yourself, but the film in so many ways is so impressive that I was swept along with it like an audience member, and that's a pretty good sign.
What I'm looking for is a self-promoting film; a movie which immediately gets people's imagination is something I can promote - a project which writes its own publicity.
I like Jailhouse Rock and Love Me Tender. The black-and-white films. With music, I tend more toward the '70s stuff because I was at the shows for those, so they bring back memories.
Though I am still very vulnerable to audiences - and it happens all the time - where for some reason the energy doesn't connect and, since the film is very personal, obviously I am made to feel very vulnerable by that.
Every film is faced with the enemy of time. Only so much story can fit into the 90-150 minutes of time that moviegoers are willing to stay in their seats. Naturally, compression is necessary. So are the exclusion and amalgamation of characters so tha...
I did four independent films during the break between 'Twilight' and 'New Moon.' I haven't even really had time to sit back and process it all. But when you do finally sit back and think about it, it's incredible.
I've hardly had an avant-garde career... If you're going to make a film, you have to try to make sure it comes out of a childlike passion, as if you're doing it for the first time.
The fact is that Hollywood, from as early as the sixties to the present time, has ghettoized cinema into the big industry, a marketing industry. In doing this, the audiences have lost touch with the aspects of film which were to be informative and ed...
Whenever I think of the high salaries we are paid as film actors, I think it is for the travel, the time away, and any trouble you get into through being well known. It's not for the acting, that's for sure.
It gets very tiring when you are filming and then taken to a room to do school work. I never get any rest time. It is either work or school. Once you are an adult, you get to take a nap in between shots.
Everyone talks about reality TV and that there are no roles left. That's false. Years ago, there were three networks. Now there are 20 cable networks and so many ways for films to be exhibited. It's an exciting time for actors, writers, directors, an...
