I will say this: the first film that I was on was 'In the Heat of the Night', that Norman Jewison directed with Sidney Poitier. I'm on the set, and I'm totally taking it for granted. Everyone is working for everyone else and pulling for the very best...
That's the best thing about being an actor. If you're in a baseball movie, you walk away knowing way more about baseball, or if you're in a sci-fi film, you learn way more about Comic-Con, and so I loved all that.
Christopher Reeve so completely inhabited the character Superman when he was in that costume, and that had such a huge effect on me as a child, watching those films back in the '70s. There was so much of that character that was, for me, Superman.
I started making little films with a 16 mm camera as an undergraduate at Yale. My first job out of college was 'assistant editor' on a forgettable low budget feature.
I'm not sure if it's fair to call it a 'fairy tale,' but I really loved 'Mulan,' the Disney film. It was my favorite. I guess it's not really a fairy tale, but you do get Eddie Murphy as a dragon.
I just dreamed about living in Paris and being French. I always loved the visual arts, film and theatre, and I hoped to be involved in creating beautiful products and images.
A few nights ago I went to a Hollywood screening of a small independent film made by Sally Kirkland, an old friend of mine who also did terrific job acting in it. There were other actors in it and they were all terrific.
Mondays I sleep. I go in at ten, do my lift, watch the game from the day before. Tuesday is off, but I go in, lift, watch film. Then I have French toast with my sister.
It's always nerve-racking to take off your clothes on film. But doing it with a woman felt safer than with a man. You know you can say, 'Don't grab me there: That's where my cellulite is'!
When I was filming, I imagined that Legolas was a meditative character who was very thoughtful and had a certain amount of depth to him. I started working on trying to find this focus that Legolas has, which wasn't really like me.
Every person wants to stretch himself and widen his audience. Since Hollywood has got more exposure and is shown all over the world, it's obvious that every actor would want to do an English film and explore himself.
When I was starting out, I always wanted to be able to do everything - comedy and drama and action, and everything in between. Film is so diverse, and it's fun to be able to take advantage of all of it.
You see, the interesting thing about books, as opposed, say, to films, is that it's always just one person encountering the book, it's not an audience, it's one to one.
It was important that I got my own voice out there in the world. I'd used it on other people's films, collaborated, and I thought, 'You know, I can do this myself.' That was more important than anything else.
When I say that I am going to do an American film, I didn't want to suddenly go off into a completely different world that which bears no relation to the style of filmmaking that I'm used to.
My heart's in stage. Making 'Quadrophenia' was exciting because we were riding around on scooters with no crash helmets. But 'hurry up and wait' is the anthem of films. Everybody wants you ready, and then you sit doing nothing.
I think my films are always quite self-reflexive and always question 'why am I doing this, is this the right way to do it, what is cinema for, does it have a purpose?'
Every star, whether it's Harrison Ford or Robert De Niro, is remembered by one film. Persis is a star in the sky - how can a star be forgotten when all you have to do is look up and see her?
If you are the kind of guy who draws in 100 million people to see his film, you've got every right to be paid accordingly, but I qualify as a character actor. I don't put a bum on a seat.
But we had a fantastic coach, Simon Clifford, who runs a British football youth game which teaches Brazilian techniques - which is what we wanted to incorporate into the film. And some of those things we eventually got in.
Television cannot film corruption. Television cannot spend five days on a rattling railway train, talking endlessly. Television needs excitement, it needs an angle, it needs a 'sound bite.
