I really don't consider myself to be a conventional Hollywood star. I've never really been marketed by the big studios to do mass market box office films.
I like it when a script shows you something new, and you can learn something through the journey of a film rather than being told things you already know.
When I do a horror or a fantasy film it all boils down to something in the script that surprises me. It could be a big thing or a small moment. If it's there I'll do it.
After an 18-year career, I left the film industry, not wanting to become one of those child-actor cautionary tales.
If there's one thing that I've done on purpose it's to take whatever job, so long as it's interesting and challenging, whether it's theatre, radio, TV or film.
When Tim Allen made The Santa Clause, I thought that was a delightful film. It took a modern sensibility but layered onto it a kind of sentiment.
As a younger actor, my motivation may have been 'Do you want that job or don't you?' Now it's 'Do you want to look like crap on film?'
A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage. A short story is a photograph; a novel is a film.
'The Dice Man' is an anti-establishment cult novel, and you don't normally make studio films from such dark comedy material.
I don't have a desire to make films that have cardboard cut-out or Hollywood stand-in replicas of humans. I need the real deal.
When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it.
While Hollywood has had a huge influence on the Indian industry, Bollywood and its actors, too, are garnering a lot of attention in the western film world.
For my film 'Fashion,' like an investigative journalist, I went about knowing the people, the models, the fashion designers. Similarly with the corporate world.
I don't have any dream role. I give my 100% to every character I play, and when the film clicks, it automatically becomes a dream role.
I went to the University of Michigan for one year, and fortunately they had a foreign-film cinema, and I discovered it, and I thought I died and went to heaven.
Showtime has given new, young filmmakers - black, white, across the board - an opportunity to make films, as well as actors who want to cross over into directing.
There's something about an American soldier you can't explain. They're so grateful for anything, even a film actress coming to see them.
'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.
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.
