You rarely get satisfaction sitting in an easy chair. If you work in a garden on the other hand, and it yields beautiful tomatoes, that's a good feeling.
Where I am right now I'm pretty good at. You know, I understand that there's a problem. I'm addressing it. I'm doing the work that I have to do.
Always changing genres, making very different films is a good idea. It's a way of making yourself feel vulnerable again, getting back to that innocence. As is working within a circumspect budget.
I work with Sally and I can see Sally doing that. She is very aggressive. Very fun loving and charming... and pushy in a very competitive way and a very healthy way and a very good actress.
I'll tell you what the real problem is: These people are working under the assumption that they know better about what is good for kids, what kids need to learn to get ahead in this world.
Screenwriting is always about what people say or do, whereas good writing is about a thought process or an abstract image or an internal monologue, none of which works on screen.
Living in New Zealand, that's something that you'd like to do as an actor, but very rarely do you get an opportunity to get such a good springboard as 'The Hobbit' to help you get international work.
You have to hone your craft, but you also have to be born with a certain amount of talent, and I never took the talent for granted - I've always worked really hard to be as good as I could be.
There are cities that get by on their good looks, offer climate and scenery, views of mountains or oceans, rockbound or with palm trees. And there are cities like Detroit that have to work for a living.
I went to the Conservatory, studying piano and singing, up to high school - but I only did four years because I then had to start working, and the jobs were so good that I didn't stop.
I love a mask. It's why I've got a thing about good writing. When you're acting, you're going into someone else's work. You're behind his words; it's not you.
Get in theater, really work your craft. Get really, really good so that when people say your name, your name is associated with quality, with integrity.
I look back on my life like a good day's work, it was done and I am satisfied with it.
I know I can't eat whatever I want and look the way I want, so you need to work for it. I give credit to Pilates and my parents' good genes.
Good fiction makes me turn off all the other parts of my brain, so that I become quiet and submissive, entirely at the mercy of the work at hand.
Mere longevity is a good thing for those who watch Life from the side lines. For those who play the game, an hour may be a year, a single day's work an achievement for eternity.
Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'
If you have a good story idea, don't assume it must form a prose narrative. It may work better as a play, a screenplay or a poem. Be flexible.
I was poor. When you're poor you work, and when you're rich you expect somebody to hand it to you. So I think being reasonably poor is very good for people.
What I have learned from my work up to now, is to try to be open, but also protect myself by not letting the good and the evil get too much importance.
Fundamentally, whether directing in the theatre or a film, you have to be a good storyteller, regardless of the form. The thing I had to work hardest at was thinking in shots.
