I hope that Requiem is better than Pi. I hope that Pi is better than my student films, and I'm hoping that I'm getting better as I get older.
If you're lucky enough to be involved in a film that's about something very real and that you hope will continue to hold up in 20 years' time it just gives you more energy and makes it feel all the more worthwhile.
I've never fallen into what I consider to be a trap of trying to figure out something analytically that could be a very popular film. I would hope my enthusiasm could match up with something with that potential.
I do hope that 'Interstellar' and this kind of science in film will catch the public fancy and help to reignite an interest in science - and a respect for the power of science in dealing with the problems that society has to deal with.
I've signed autographs as Natalie Portman. I was at a Film Festival party where someone asked if I was her, and I didn't want to embarrass them, so I signed the autograph as her. I hope she doesn't mind.
I have learned from my experiences in this industry that there is absolutely no way to control people's opinions on your performance in your movie. You go out there, promote your film and hope people like the work you did.
I hope to land roles where my presence is carried on throughout the film. I'm looking forward to taking on a role with a complicated backstory and yet someone who refuses to lose sight of hope. I know that it will happen someday.
With documentary-film projects, you hope you highlight an area of concern people haven't thought about before. A lot of times, I'm asking myself - 'This seems to be a significant problem. What can be done that hasn't been done?'
There are a number of parallels between the slums of Brazil and those found in my hometown, Karachi. The dichotomy that exists in Brazil is uncannily similar to that found in Pakistan, and I hope to one day make a film that follows similar themes.
Joe E. Lewis said, 'Money doesn't buy happiness but it calms the nerves.' And that is how I feel about a film being well-received.
We've got people looking at our seamy side and our sad side a lot of the time because that's easier. It's much more difficult to make a film about happiness with lots of jokes in it.
History tends to take the simplest possible view. As soon as you start to scratch the surface of any historical event, it starts to become more and more complicated, which is not the stuff of Hollywood films. Complications tend to break down the budg...
Movie SF is, by definition, dumbed down - there have only been three or four SF movies in the history of film that aspire to the complexity of literary SF.
I think I'm the only actor in the history of film who got to slap Sam Jackson on the face and butt and lived to tell about it.
In New York, I get people coming up to me because 'The History Boys' was such a hit on Broadway, and they show the film all the time on cable over there, so people recognise you.
There is rap music in all my films. In 'La Vie des Morts,' there is rap music too. It's because I'm French, and when it appeared in 1978, it was so new, it set off my musical imagination.
I sort of jumped out of movies and into the lifeboat of comics. I loved it right away. It was the opposite of film school. Whatever was in my imagination could end up in the finished product. There were just no limitations.
The general effect of viewing 'Jumanji' is thrilling. I was able to see on film a thing that at one point had only existed in my imagination. I got to see the images from my book come alive.
There's the argument that you can relate to someone who's completely unrelatable. In the way that a director shows you his imagination on a film, then I get to show you my imagination in a big dumb character.
Agnes Varda changed my view of cinema; she directs from an artistic point of view, and a film is most of all the expression of an artistic director. I learnt to enter the world and the imagination of a director.
I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.
