The average teen today spends about 35 hours a week in front of a screen of some kind: iPod, movie, TV, video. And a lot of it is good, but a lot of it's not. And so I think you've got that five hours a day of media coming into your kid's head that's...
I came to Los Angeles only after filming 'A Good Day to Die Hard,' when I was cast in the independent movie 'Delirium.' Director Lee Roy Kunz was looking everywhere for a Russian actress. He saw my photos, and only then he learned where I starred bef...
There was a point where I was making four movies a year. I was always on a set. I had no stories to tell. I was feeling empty. My life was just luggage and hotels and from set to set, from character to character. And one day, I said, 'And where is mi...
Every time you have a carrot instead of a cookie, every time you go to the gym instead of going to the movies, that's a costly investment in your health. But how much you want to invest is going to depend on how much longer you expect to live in the ...
Every movie I do, I always use things that have happened in my life. Funny moments, anything. If it just sticks out I'll write it down and use that, too, because it has to come out of you. But no one can work when they're depressed. I don't think I'd...
I had a couple of movies that I was passionately involved with that I could never get made. 'Richard Pryor,' I wrote for - gosh - over a year. That was close to getting made for two-and-a-half years after that. We're still pushing it, you know. It is...
I'm a spoilt brat. I thought I was just going to walk in and make movies. But I'd been my own boss for so long that all of a sudden to be facing a roomful of people who were niggling over every little scene... I just thought I'd go back and draw my c...
Back in the late '90s, I put together a humorous newsmagazine program called 'The Awful Truth' for Bravo. We helped one guy get an organ transplant whose insurance company had refused to pay. I thought, if we could save a guy's life in a 10-minute se...
Because too many times in life there's just one person that I met, just one thing that I heard, one movie that I saw, one song that was sung, that changed my life. So I'm always trying to stay awake to be in the moment, and capture the moments when t...
I started writing 'Leaves Of Grass' when my professional life was falling apart somewhat. I just had a movie implode in pre-production. And so I came back licking my wounds to New York, where I live, and started to write a script about a protagonist ...
Many movie stars or American Idol contestants sort of fall into theater... and say, 'Oh, yeah, I would love to do theater.' And then they get here and say, 'Oh, wait a minute, this actually is a craft!' It's not just show up one day and do it. It's s...
I'm so excited. I love Peeta so much. I think that over the course of the next couple of books, he has so many interesting places to go to, character-wise. I'm ready to dive full-force into it. When I saw the movie actually, it got me energized. 'Let...
The movies remind me of the Triangle Club at Princeton. I used to belong to it, and we always started out firm in our decision to create new and startling things. We always ended up by producing the same old show. In the beginning, our enthusiasm and...
I was bar mitzvahed, which was hard. I feel it was the hardest thing I ever had to do; harder than making a movie. It was a lot of studying, you know. I wasn't a perfect Hebrew reader, and also, they say when you're reading your Torah portion, you're...
When I was three and a half years old, I heard my big sister tell my mum that at school that day all the kids sat on the floor and watched 'The Neverending Story.' Having never heard of the movie, I concluded that this was what school must be: sittin...
I think to this day, 'Superman/Wonder Woman' is probably one of the trickiest things I've been working on. It's like being asked to write a 'Star Wars' movie or something like that. You don't know how you're going to handle it; you don't know if you ...
I like how you can go back and watch David Lean and John Ford and see the influence that had on Steven Spielberg, especially David Lean, in the camerawork, and yet, you don't watch any Spielberg movie and think of David Lean. Once you're looking for ...
I kept thinking, 'How do you make a modern musical?' Then it became clear that I could do it just like a small indie art-house movie, very naturalistically. I could create a world where it's o.k. to break into song, without an orchestra coming up out...
It's hard to be surprised by a film. It's hard to be surprised by another actor or by a director when you've seen enough and been around. So when I am, or when I forget that I'm watching someone's movie, or when I don't know how someone made a certai...
When some people get parts, they feel they can now relax, but for me it was always the opposite. Sometimes before I do a movie or before I act out a scene, I may not sleep well the night before. If I don't know what the scene is about, I might get al...
I think in television and film, it's not usually the child's point of view. It's the story of an adult. If there's a child in a drama or an action-adventure movie, they're someone who needs to be saved, someone who needs to be protected, or if they'r...
