'Wall Street' was a very important movie for me in terms of my career. I won an Oscar, and then the film 'Fatal Attraction' came right after it.
I watch old school film so that I can learn so much that I just sort of miss all the new stuff.
One of the fine moments in 1940s film is no longer than a blink: Bogart, as he crosses the street from one bookstore to another, looks up at a sign.
The key thing is that you start every film from sort of a blank page, almost like you discover it like a child discovers a new world.
If you want your film to be instantly green-lit, your first approach is not to go to a relatively unknown English actor. They're not going to throw millions of dollars at you for that.
You know, 20 years... the films of television when it started, the literature, radio in communist countries, they're clean as a whistle; there was no violence, no sex, no drugs, nothing.
On a film, I was always acting. I was either changing my clothes really quickly and wiping off the lipstick and putting on the other lipstick and then working constantly, constantly.
The Dutch film industry is a pretty small community, so within Holland, I think most actors know each other and have worked with each other.
I wanted to write in film or something like that. I thought acting was an embarrassing thing to say you wanted to do, especially when you're young. It seemed really uncool.
When I graduated from high school, I got accepted to York University, Fine Arts film program.
I understand that in TV, people like likable people. In film, you can get away with playing a terrible person. In TV, you're in people's homes every week.
People are going to see both of us and think it's an Abbott and Costello kind of thing. It's not an easy switch. It's not an easy transition from TV to film.
Sometimes you can do a TV show on a subject you just can't do in film. Either it's too long or studios will perceive it as not being commercial.
If you go back and look, a completely underrated film is 'Quest for Fire.' That was one of the most genius, simplistic but incredibly sophisticated notion of what it was. The evolution of that was just fantastic.
It would have been more obvious to go into film, based on the generation before me, but the generation before them were all composers or classical musicians.
Only after awhile. After it came out and people began to engage in discussions about the social reflections of the film that I realized it had an importance I hadn't thought of.
I'm in a position where I'm being continually knocked back for the kind of independent films I want to be in because people don't know who I am.
I always put in my 100 percent. Once the film is over, I look at my next, because then it's up to the audience to decide my fate.
It was not possible to film in California, because all the areas are heavily built up now. Coming to Cape Town is an invitation to step into the past and recreate Los Angeles of the 1930s.
I'd like to do interesting indie films mixed with big, high-paying commercial blockbusters. 'One for you, one for me,' is what they say.
Other actors like to rehearse on film-they like 30 or 40 takes. When you get an actor like that, it becomes difficult for me because I'm ready to quit after number two.
