I tried martial arts classes for three weeks, but I quit because you actually get hit. I just want to do the movie kind of martial arts.
I don't think a lot of actors talk about it, but there's usually a process where you essentially purge yourself of the character that you played prior to the movie.
If you think about my filmography, I have never done a movie that a kid could go see, except for 'Iron Giant,' and I'm not even on the screen.
Turning one's novel into a movie script is rather like making a series of sketches for a painting that has long ago been finished and framed.
Sometimes when you're editing a movie, you have the thing that you don't expect - which is you make it longer and longer as you go along.
There's got to be something that you can do that will not just be a nice honor to the play, or the book, or the movie you're dealing with, but some aspect that maybe can explore something that the play couldn't do.
On 'The Messenger,' just imagining playing the part of a soldier in that movie was kind of hard for me. And in 'Rampart,' the idea of playing a cop was even harder. It was hard to imagine myself as a cop.
The stories have been told so often by those of us who supported President Reagan over the years that they seem mundane, almost like a fictional novel or a movie script.
I need to go someplace faraway that doesn't have telephones and doesn't have a record player and doesn't have movie theaters and people walking down the street in order to not do anything.
Corporate Hollywood thinks I'm a geek to go back and do theater. They don't understand why I don't want to be a movie star, why I'm not pursuing Mel Gibson's roles.
I'm not looking at an action movie as something where I just jump around and look beautiful and show my muscles. Since there are so few people that do this and have that pedigree, people disregard their contribution.
Many of the critics today get airline tickets, hotel accommodation, bags, beautiful photographs, gifts and other expenses paid by the distributors, and then are supposed to write serious articles about the movie.
I was not only typecast as a Russian, but I was typecast as Yakov Smirnoff. This is understandable, and I was very happy to get the roles, but it would be nice to be in a movie where I could be someone else.
Now a movie with 30 million returns would be something very incredible and the producer can only get 10 to 15 million. This is only 100 thousands US dollars. This is not enough!
I thought I was attractive when I shot 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding.' Studio executives and movie reviewers let me know I had a confidence in my looks that was not shared by them.
These days I'm mostly familiar with two parts of L.A.: one is movie culture, and the other is Asian culture. The Westside is work, and the Eastside is Chinese - which means my friends.
So how critics will perceive your film or your work, or whether your movie is going to make $100 million at the box office, or whether you are going to be winning any awards - well, you have no control over that.
An ideal movie would be, like - to get this to happen, I have to work so much harder - but imagine Denzel Washington, Laurence Fishburne, Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy... Who else? Donald Faison. Directed by Steven Spielberg. That would be awesome.
I actually believed if you work hard enough it was inevitable you'd succeed. Then I lived the 'Social Network' movie, but only the first half. The hardest part is the grueling work of constantly being wrong.
I've gone through various periods with superheroes. They work in the right hands, but they don't work in other hands. It's tricky. But any movie is tricky. It's impossible to say, 'This is what you do in any situation.'
A lot of actors, whatever movie you're working on, you make up a back story just for your own, to work off, even if the audience doesn't have it revealed to them. I think it's important that the audience makes up their own mind.
