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.
Everyone always asks me, 'Do you want to be famous... ' I never really thought about becoming famous. I just want to work, to be able to put out inspiring and good film and TV.
I was offered a choice of a flat salary up front or a percentage of the film's future earnings. I took the up front money. Nobody could have figured what Halloween would ultimately become.
I'm working on a film called 'Bonnie.' Bonnie means water. It's in English, and it's dealing with a future world in a megacity - which is what the U.N. says we're going to be - but in this megacity, a city that runs out of water.
I think the kick to doing comedy is just to get in a film with really funny people and let them do their jobs. I find that in most comedies, I'm not the funny one, which works out great.
It's funny, like 15 years ago when I was a kid doing all the John Hughes movies, I remember Bruce Willis was the only guy who was transitioning from television into film.
I mean I've seen 3D films so far and I think it's a long way to go before they replace actors. It's a funny thing with 3D, I haven't quite got it yet. Yet.
I think that the episodes are like mini horror films really; the characters make bad decisions early on and these things just snowball for them and get worse and worse. And that's what I find funny.
I took 'P.S. I Love You' thinking it was going to be a little funny, and I ended up crying every day on that film.
It's funny: I've been very successful and done a lot of films, and I don't really have an agent - I don't really pursue jobs, I let people come to me.
A lot of America is kind of done. People have been making films about it for 100 years. Everything to me feels used up. But Jo-Burg feels unbelievably inspirational to me.
Making a film of a work you've played for six weeks gives you intimate knowledge of the character. By the time you go in front of the camera you've worked out the behavior and life of a character.
If I could live my life all over I'd do everything the same; the film in my camera would remain the same; there's no way lord, to leave this love behind.
I've always been excited by rotoscoping, the technique used in films like 'Waking Life,' which fuses animation with real-life emotion. It seemed like it was a process ripe for innovation.
I film normal-life subjects in natural settings that some people would consider uncinematic. But what I want to show is nature itself, as the truth of life.
New York is the perfect place for a film festival because there's already so much energy and life here, and New Yorkers love movies.
