I was a kid living in New Jersey, who - I'd wanted to make movies since I was a little kid, so that came before music for me. But I started playing drums just as a hobby, and I wasn't even really into jazz that much.
'Batman Begins' came out and it was really successful, and it had gritty naturalism. And suddenly... I can't tell you how many movies I was pitched where it was, 'We want to do what you did with 'Batman' but with 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,' or wh...
Because I could dance, my folks went through hell so I could be in movies. But I didn't dance in pictures. I cried! At one point I had polio, which I believe was a result of the stress I felt in the studios.
I think you should make more movies, more musicals. I think the public deserves that. I think this country deserves to be able to get out and foster that talent. Give them an opportunity to become stars. I think the whole idea is wonderful.
In all my science fiction movies, I try to blend the familiar with the futuristic so as not to be too off-putting to the audience. There is always something familiar they can grab onto.
When New Kids became really successful, I got a lot of offers to do parts in movies and TV shows, but I was really busy, so I pretty much turned everything down. But I always knew it was something that I would eventually put some energy into.
I've never seen 'The Goonies.' I've never seen 'Indiana Jones.' I watched 'UHF' over and over again when I was little, and that was it. I had no time for any other movies. I watched 'Naked Gun,' 'UHF,' and 'Airplane!' over and over.
What we're supposed to do as actors is be able to portray real human beings and emotions. And if you grow up in this bubble of showbiz and you only know people who make movies, you don't really have an understanding of the world outside.
The 'serial kisser' tag that has been thrust on to me is a lame stereotype. It irritates me. Yes, there is sexual content in my movies, and I have never been apologetic about doing bold scenes. But it's not fair to tag me this way because that can be...
If you're not a real chameleon of an actor and if you're not one of those guys who can really shape-change themselves all the time, one of the ways to keep pushing yourself and keep changing is to be in different kinds of movies.
When I was a kid, my pop used to take me to the double feature. He would take me - I had two brothers - and we used to go in the early '80s and check out these grindhouse movies - a double feature, sometimes a triple feature.
When my friends and I would act out movies as kids, we'd play the guys' roles, since they had the most interesting things to do. Decades later, I can hardly believe my sons and daughter are seeing many of the same limited choices in current films.
Sometimes movies that I'm in that I have a leading role don't necessarily get the biggest release, so it's a difficult thing between balancing indies that have uncertain futures and maybe larger films that have guaranteed releases that you have a sma...
There should be a point to movies. Sure, you're giving people a diversion from the cold world for a bit, but at the same time, you pass on some facts and rules and maybe a little bit of wisdom.
I've played heavies for years and years and years. I was bald. I came to Hollywood. I did a play about junk. I was a pusher, so I played pushers for years and years and years. I did war movies and things like that.
One of the most interesting things, at least for me, are the soundtracks for 'The Social Network' and 'Drive.' Basically, it's what I did in 'American Gigolo.' I could have done the music for those movies blindfolded. And one of them won an Oscar, an...
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 have three kids who like Harry Potter so I was sort of aware of it. You can't really move from it: it's on buses, in stores, it's everywhere. One of my kids has read the books; the other two are too small but they like the movies.
A few years after 'Melrose Place,' when the luster of 'Melrose Place' wore off and what was left was just the stink, and I was just doing bad TV movies, that was a personal low point. I felt I needed to stop doing those, and I did.
You have to read scripts and audition and develop relationships. It takes a long time to develop a body of work but over the last 25 years I guess I've done that many movies. In hindsight it may seem effortless, but there's a lot of work that goes in...
I've done movies for certain reasons; I did 'Anaconda' because the black man lives. Simple. The black man isn't dead in the first three pages, like Jurassic Park. It's like, 'The black man kills the snake with a Latino girl? Damn! I got to do this.'
