What I learned from this movie, 40 Days and 40 Nights: Abstinence can be a very good thing. Especially from box offices where this film is playing.
I was out in L.A. and I had gone to film school and I was out here for a couple of years. For a lot of years, I was bartending and having a good time.
I've just made a cancer drama, called 'Now Is Good,' directed by Ol Parker and starring Dakota Fanning. We filmed in Brighton and it's about a girl dying of leukemia, although it's not as depressing as it sounds.
I knew you had to go in and audition and maybe they'd hire you, and that's where you start. I had a good understanding about press: that it's the actor's responsibility to publicize his or her films.
I hope each day to have done 10 seconds of good work that they can use in the film. And I'm always afraid I didn't get those 10 seconds.
As an actor, whatever I get the opportunity to do, if it has a good story then I'm in. I thought 'Dead End' had a great story; 'Nightmare on Elm Street,' of course, was probably the first real horror film I was in.
Ridley Scott was part of the production team on 'The Good Wife.' I auditioned on my iPhone, and it moved very quickly after that, as they thought I was right for the role, and pretty soon I was filming in Iceland for two months.
I'm not saying I want a film career because I think I'm too good for television. I'm simply saying I want more control over my life.
When I was a kid, my mother used to film all of our holidays and all of the good times, and I kind of associated the camera with everything being okay and everything being happy.
'Eureka' was very bad timing. The early 1980s: Reagan and Thatcher were in, greed was good, and here was a film about the richest man in the world who still couldn't be happy. Politically and sociologically, it was out of step.
All of the characters in my films, they share one commonality. It doesn't matter whether they are good or bad, it doesn't matter whether they are smart or stupid, these characters all take responsibility for their own behavior. I'm much the same.
I don't think it's the job of filmmakers to give anybody answers. I do think, though, that a good film makes you ask questions of yourself as you leave the theatre.
Over the years, I have realized that there's more to a film's fate than just good acting and a solid script. It needs to be marketed well. It's the package that sells - the songs, action, actors, etc.
At the end, it's your movie and your performance that stands out. So if I am a good actor, and if am being part of good entertaining engaging films, audiences will like me.
I'd quite like to do a film but I'd also love to do more theatre. I want to keep challenging myself with good roles. It's harder for women because there aren't as many challenging roles.
I'm just trying to tell a good story and make thought-provoking, entertaining films. I just try and draw upon the great culture we have as a people, from music, novels, the streets.
The script is a blueprint for the film - there are very few bad scripts that make good movies. If you really like the character and understand the utility it serves within the movie, that's a part of my process.
Certainly for my father, there were great times, good times, not-so-good times. He might be shooting a Fellini film for six months, then not working for two months. I'm used to that dynamic.
I do all these various activities like painting and writing, comedy and films probably because not that I'm good at everything but because I'm not good at any of these things.
Film is an editor's medium. You can create very good raw material and they can make it horrible, or you can do not so well and they can make it beautiful. You don't really know.
You go overseas and people are oppressed and scared and worried but we're not like that... we're more like my films and how people come out at the end of seeing them - they feel good.
