When I first came to America, you know, I would look at the newsstands and see the women on the magazine covers. I had never seen anyone smile the way these girls smile! It's like they have nothing to worry about!
I love the way in which I make up dances. It's a complicated way and the product is usually clear. Clear and simple. I don't need everybody to know that there are all of these fabulous things going on. If you CAN see it, that's wonderful.
Our society is so obsessed with working out to be skinny, and none of that has a purpose. I love that my daughter sees me running because she knows I have a race and that I want to be faster. It becomes much less of a grind when it's that way.
Every time I get a script it's a matter of trying to know what I could do with it. I see colors, imagery. It has to have a smell. It's like falling in love. You can't give a reason why.
If the right thing came along, I would absolutely direct something I did not write because I love the process so much, but we'll see. I'm taking it day by day.
I love research. Sometimes I think writing novels is just an excuse to allow myself this leisurely time of getting to know a period and reading its books and watching its films. I see it as a real treat.
When I look at acting careers that I really admire, I see that it's been a precise decision-making process for these people. They make decisions based on what they love, and they do only the things that they are passionate about. They play only chara...
The reason I do photographs is to help people understand my music, so it's very important that I am the same, emotionally, in the photographs as in the music. Most people's eyes are much better developed than their ears. If they see a certain emotion...
People see my current success but don't realize I've worked hard to get where I am. I used to clean garbage off the Philadelphia docks and put a lot of time into developing my music.
Whereas I used to get depressed or neurotic or dwell on things, I see my son's bright eyes and smile in the morning, and suddenly, I don't feel like I'm depressed anymore. There's nothing to be depressed about when you've got that.
I never suffered from the absence of a father. On the contrary, as a child I was more inclined to see men as a disturbing factor. It made things difficult for me when I started working as a director.
It slaps your dignity just right. I loved the idea of these proud, dignified black men, and I saw the older ones wounded, and it wounded me ten times as much because I couldn't stand seeing them hurt like this.
I can't watch 'Titanic' without breaking down within the first 10 minutes. You know, when it got re-released in 3D, I went to see it again. My mom came to pick me up from the cinema, and I was just bawling my eyes out.
When I was growing up in New Jersey, my mom would regularly take my sister and I into the city to see shows. I have many fond memories of standing in the half-price ticket line in Times Square and going to matinees.
I don't see my movies. When you ask me about one of my movies, it just goes in my memory because maybe sometimes I confuse one for another. I think all movies are like sequences, which is the body of my work.
A producer is always behind the scenes, even more in the movies - nobody sees you. I didn't even meet most of the actors. When I worked on 'Top Gun,' I never met Tom Cruise. You were always in the background.
I just gravitate to movies where the mystery is the character himself. Any time you see a trailer of something where somebody is questioning 'Who am I?' I'm hooked.
Aladdin: Are you afraid to fight me yourself, you cowardly snake? Jafar: A snake, am I? Perhaps you'd like to see how snakelike I can be! [he turns into a giant snake]
Adèle: I miss you. I miss not touching each other. Not seeing each other, not breathing in each other. I want you. All the time. No one else.
I laugh when I see people in pain. Sometimes I think it is a defense mechanism from childhood, where you're in so much pain you have to laugh. It is a survival mechanism.
People have been able to see that as cheeky and as flirty as I am, I am not the dreadful slapper that the press used to portray me as. But it will probably all turn around and people will hate me again in a couple of years.
