I'd love to do movies and be on TV. But I think if I transitioned into TV/film completely, I would really miss singing and dancing. It would be ideal to be cast in a movie musical!
I'm such a bad shopper for myself. I love fashion and all that kind of stuff, but that's sort of the last thing I want to do when I'm done with a film is go shopping. I want to just chill.
I remember when I did my Enron film, my executive producers at the time felt very strongly that I should mock the Enron executives more viciously because everybody wanted that moment.
My first job was a film called 'Storm Damage' for the BBC. I was 16 and working with really respected British actors. I didn't have an agent at the time, and it kind of threw me into real acting.
You have to find it in the moment, and that's one of the challenges of being an actor - especially a film actor - is that you have to maintain these heightened emotions for long periods of time. There's no trick to it. You just have to do.
I was thinking about doing another film at the same time, which was the sequel to Basic Instinct and I just had a feeling that wasn't going to happen. You know, I just kind of read the writing on the wall.
While I filmed the 'Walker, Texas Ranger' series for eight and a half years, I had never had much time to read, except for screenplays of the episodes.
I've been taking my time now between projects looking for stuff that has a little bit more substance, that isn't surface. Some of the films that I've done in the past really were surface.
I was so besotted with '8½' that, when it was on TV, I used to take pictures with my 35-mm. camera of the frames of the film. That was the first time I'd ever really seen Italians on screen.
If you were in the film industry at that time, you were always picked up by directors who were much older. You were whisked about and shown things. I did work very hard though.
My work in books, films and talks lies almost wholly with children, and I have very little time to give to grown-ups.
The '80s were a time of technical wonder in filmmaking; unfortunately, some colleges didn't integrate their film and theater departments - so you had actors who were afraid of the camera, and directors who couldn't talk to the actors.
When you shoot a film, it takes six months, and it's very important keep the morale of the crew up top, all the time, and keep them on their toes, and keep them enthusiastic.
I started in community theater at 7 years old. I loved being on stage and performing. At the time, I didn't correlate that the stuff I was doing on stage was the same thing that I was watching in my favorite films.
It can take a long time for some people to find out how to ground themselves, and film sets are an odd atmosphere to do it in - especially if, like me, you finished school early.
Everything I've wanted to turn into a film becomes something new and different when it becomes a movie... Each time I work with an author, I say to them, 'A book and a movie are different things.'
For me the most moving moment came when I first started working on 2001. I was already in awe of him, and he had very much already become Stanley Kubrick by the time the film started.
The first film I made was when I was 13 and it was called 'The Dogs That Ate Detroit.' It starred my Saint Bernard Barney, and it was a killer thriller with oodles of special effects that were cutting edge for the time.
It was very weird because for a long time no one really recognised me from my films, but 'The Hobbit' has totally changed that, and I've had some really special moments, especially with youngsters.
My films are about ideals that clash with the world. Every time it's a man in the lead, they have forgotten about the ideals. And every time it's a woman in the lead, they take the ideals all the way.
I would certainly say that films like Time Code and the Loss of Sexual Innocence were far more rewarding to me in terms of being able to move forward as a filmmaker.
