'Eureka' was very bad timing. The early 1980s: Reagan and Thatcher were in, greed was good, and here was a film about the richest man in the world who still couldn't be happy. Politically and sociologically, it was out of step.
All of the characters in my films, they share one commonality. It doesn't matter whether they are good or bad, it doesn't matter whether they are smart or stupid, these characters all take responsibility for their own behavior. I'm much the same.
I don't think it's the job of filmmakers to give anybody answers. I do think, though, that a good film makes you ask questions of yourself as you leave the theatre.
Over the years, I have realized that there's more to a film's fate than just good acting and a solid script. It needs to be marketed well. It's the package that sells - the songs, action, actors, etc.
At the end, it's your movie and your performance that stands out. So if I am a good actor, and if am being part of good entertaining engaging films, audiences will like me.
I'd quite like to do a film but I'd also love to do more theatre. I want to keep challenging myself with good roles. It's harder for women because there aren't as many challenging roles.
I'm just trying to tell a good story and make thought-provoking, entertaining films. I just try and draw upon the great culture we have as a people, from music, novels, the streets.
The script is a blueprint for the film - there are very few bad scripts that make good movies. If you really like the character and understand the utility it serves within the movie, that's a part of my process.
Certainly for my father, there were great times, good times, not-so-good times. He might be shooting a Fellini film for six months, then not working for two months. I'm used to that dynamic.
I do all these various activities like painting and writing, comedy and films probably because not that I'm good at everything but because I'm not good at any of these things.
Film is an editor's medium. You can create very good raw material and they can make it horrible, or you can do not so well and they can make it beautiful. You don't really know.
We need more filmmakers of color telling the story. I'd like to see more filmmakers take their products out independently, put together a good commercial film and distribute it online.
You go overseas and people are oppressed and scared and worried but we're not like that... we're more like my films and how people come out at the end of seeing them - they feel good.
It became very clear to the director that it would be foolish not to use our friendship. I had tried to talk to him about it because all the relationships in the film are so, not negative, but antagonistic. There's not a lot of love going around.
The only fear I have is that I will wake up one day and nobody will allow me to do films. This is a fear every actor has.
Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.
To me, watching a movie is like going to an amusement park. My worst fear is making a film that people don't think is a good ride.
Somewhere after you have few successful films, there is a fear of losing what you have got. It is very easy in the beginning, as you are a risk taker, have nothing to lose, and there is no perception about you.
People are so used to having their lives filmed, they're not even conscious of having cameras around. I still have that sort of suspicion when a camera comes out. I view it as a thing to fear.
A big fear of working with an actor that's never been a lead in a film before is that you're going to have to work really hard to pull a performance out of her.
When I left university I was working for a documentary film company for six or seven years to the great relief of my father whose greatest waking fear was that I would become an actor.
