I think you are taken more seriously as a young adult when you are on a film set and you are doing a job and people expect something from you. Is that losing my youth? Not at all. I had a fantastic childhood.
The worst of the action films are the ones where everything is one shout from beginning to finish. And there's no differentiation between beats, like small or big, or quiet or expansive. It's all just one loud shout.
The thing with TV and filming is the timing is all faked anyway. You do it so many times, from so many different angles. You never really do it all in one go anyway, so they just fix it all in the edit.
When the BBC decided to bring Doctor Who back as a feature film a few years ago, one national newspaper ran a poll to ask its readers who should be the new Doctor, and I topped it.
I started writing movie scripts. They excited me a lot, but I didn't like them when they were finished because they were simple copies of the films I saw in childhood.
When you think of the 'Exorcist,' you think of Linda Blair and pea soup and all this madness, but really if you look at the first half of that film, the stuff between her and Ellen Burstyn is so naturalistic and so real.
For the first two weeks of filming, I remember bristling at some of the occurrences on the set, none of which directly involved me. Then I surrendered to the environment, to Michael's method, and became much happier, even though no one knew what to e...
I offer originality: you don't know what my films are like until you go to them. I think that's the reason I've been getting all this attention.
I did some theatre. I had some smaller roles in a couple TV shows and films. I used to think I did a lot of acting, but my 'career' started when I started 'Homeland'.
I know it sounds silly, but in auditions for film or TV, the words aren't as important - you need to get into the character and have the gist of the scene. But in theater, if you don't do it word for word, then you throw off your scene partner.
'Scary Movie' has lost its way as a franchise. It has turned into 'Disaster Film' and 'Epic Movie' and 'Date Movie' and that isn't what I wanted. I wanted to do a movie that was just grounded in a reality that went to crazy places.
When I was younger, I wanted to own a circus and create this bizarre revue that went from town to town. I suppose, in a way, I got my wish because when you're working on a film, you're in a traveling circus.
I just want to make films that have enough of a budget to pull off high-level imagery but also have a budget that is low enough that I can do what I want.
I don't want egos and personalities on the set that make it more difficult to make the film. I don't want people who take the focus away from the movie and the ideas behind the movie.
What you're really after when you see a film or listen to a song is a singular vision, and I'm not sure how much of that you really get in Hollywood.
The idea of acting is something that absolutely repulses me. I just can't do it. I'm terrible at it. I get roped into films every now and then, and it's always a disaster.
Most of my favourite moments in film have been when I've had an opportunity to say something from scratch, something original, whether I jotted down a few lines or it came out in improvisation.
You get dinged for wanting to do a comedy, then wanting to do a big-budget action film, and then wanting to do an indie. But you can't let other people trying to label you get in the way of trying to do something artistically.
I did 'Kidulthood' and 'Adulthood,' and that's what people wanted and expect me to always do. They want me to do 'hood films and be the guy swinging baseball bats and saying 'Yo Blood' and beating up others in the street.
Whenever I wasn't in school with a tutor three hours a day, I'd get a knock and be rushed to set and they'd be waiting and I'd film my thing and then I'd go back to school again.
It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently or if your favorite films wouldn't even speak to each other if they met at a party.
