When inspiration does not come, I go for a walk, go to the movie, talk to a friend, let go... The muse is bound to return again, especially if I turn my back!
Each day a few more lies eat into the seed with which we are born, little institutional lies from the print of newspapers, the shock waves of television, and the sentimental cheats of the movie screen.
Until this movie I have played a boxer, a cowboy, a knight, a prince, an elf and a pirate. I am so glad to have done all of that already, and am ready for this phase of my career.
I worked with James Orange and Hosea Williams as a teenager, and he's portrayed in the movie by Wendell Pierce. So, for me to be able to come in, 20 years after working with them as a teenager, and to portray Reverend James Orange in 'Selma' is mind-...
Otherwise, to be a movie star, it's a lot of compromise and also a lot of headaches. You can't do what you want. You become a prisoner of your fame. This happened to me in France and I don't want it.
For a found-footage-style movie, there's a definite advantage in using unknowns, because it helps sell the illusion that it's real. A known actor would get in the way of the suspension of disbelief.
After I watched 'The Exorcist' I refused to watch any other movie that had anything to do with ghosts or demons. I didn't even watch 'Ghostbusters' until I was much older.
In my real movie-going days, which were the thirties, you didn't stand in line. You strolled down the street and sallied into the theater at any hour of the day or night.
It was the kind of love you read in the books and watched in the movies. Instant. Epic. Glorious. And I know there's nothing perfect in this world, but I swear, at that time, it was a perfect love.
But I really felt that, something about the lights going down, and the sense of community. I saw this movie at one festival, and there were 1700 people.
Me and Johnny Rotten have been talking about doing a movie of his book, No Irish, No Dogs, No Blacks. We have a script, so hopefully that's going to happen at some point in our careers.
When we did Wayne's World, it was 14 million dollars and they didn't bug us too much because they just thought it was some little movie that nobody was ever going to see. We showed them.
Any good business person applies financial discipline to everything they do. The movie business is and should be no different; I don't believe you have to sacrifice creativity to have business success. To the contrary, great art requires discipline.
Of course, when strangers see me, they're star-struck because of who I am, but my friends take me as a friend because I'm their friend - not because I'm a movie star.
The idea was to make a movie ourselves with everyone playing a cameo role. Preferably before we all go, 'cos poor old Charlie Wilson was murdered, and of course Buster has gone.
It's a very smart and heartfelt movie and that's why, I think, we're all drawn to it. We really showed up for this with this collective idea that it was really ambitious, but we felt we all really had something to gain from it.
We feel the same emotions for our ideas as we do for the real world, which is why we can cry while reading a book, or fall in love with movie stars.
In the States, there's ESPN3, and each country has different options, and other than premiere league football, there tends to be very little global content. And movie and TV rights are pretty broad content.
I'm not a caterer. I just have to stay with my creative convictions. At some point, you have to just get past the special-interest groups and do what you're there to do, which is make a movie.
Also, I plan to screw something up on every movie I do so that I can learn from my mistakes and become a better director with each project.
I think that one of my favorite movie roles has been a film that I did with Jason Statham that was out last year called 'Safe.' I played the main bad guy in that.
