Steven Spielberg was my idol growing up. I knew that all of his movies have a very specific message and point of view, and the always are really epic.
Not only do I have to live, right, I have to get some cash for my troubles - it's a scary thing, and people need to start to think about the messages that they send in the movies.
It can have an enormous effect because big budget movies can have big budget perks, and small budget movies have no perks, but what is the driving force, of course, is the script, and your part in it.
I always loved silent movies. I was not a specialist, but I loved them. And when I started directing, I became really fascinated by the format - how it works, the device of the silent movie.
Since I was 4, Julia Roberts has inspired me. I thought if I liked her enough, I'd become as pretty as her. That didn't happen, but I was obsessed and watched her movies over and over.
I grew up in Toronto and as long as I can remember, as long as there was cable, even those old cable boxes that were wired to the TV, there have been Bollywood movies on Toronto TV.
Usually people like to categorise artists. With my films, I categorise people: if I know which one of my movies you like, I can tell which kind of a person you are.
I do like the zombie movies quite a bit. I know there are purist zombie guys that don't like the running zombies, but I dig the infected thing. I think that's a scarier incorporation of an element into the genre.
My favorite scene in all of movies is Gregory Peck in 'To Kill A Mockingbird': You see him where he's on the porch, and his face is almost completely obscured. I don't want to see his face.
Make them laugh, make them cry, and hack to laughter. What do people go to the theatre for? An emotional exercise. I am a servant of the people. I have never forgotten that.
In a weird way, if you look at all the 'Apes' movies, they all seem like different stories in the same universe. 'Beneath the Planet of the Apes' is definitely a continuation, but the other ones jump all around chronologically.
I use to watch like maybe three or four movies, five days out of the week. I was a movie buff, but I really didn't know what it was like behind the scenes, or the whole political process of it.
Years ago I realized that maybe I made mistake, politically, when I turned a lot of that stuff down. I would go off to obscure places and make movies that six people went to see.
Sometimes the independent movies can get a little too arty-farty. You watch the IFC Channel and you want to throw up. You don't always have to take things so serious, you know.
I have a lot of things I want to do. I have a lot of fire. I want to do film. I want to do action movies. I want to do period pieces.
I wanted to write something from a child's viewpoint... Five of the characters I have played in movies have either been abused or became abusers, themselves, and I just kind of felt like there was a need.
I made two movies very young, and then I had trouble getting a movie made, and so - which was both, I think, a plus and a minus. It was a minus because it made me unhappy.
I have a trophy case that contains all the action figures ever made of me. It also has items I've stolen from my movies, like three guns and holsters from 'Serenity'.
I've always fantasized about being on TV. And I was. Then I fantasized about being in the movies. What could be better than captain of a space ship? I get to ride horses, shoot guns, have adventures.
It's my motor, it's the thing that keeps me going and so when I have these auditions for these big movies, I can depend on myself because I've been working consistently.
I don't shoot movies quickly because I get a lot of coverage and a lot of angles, so we have all the pieces in the editing. I do a lot of takes, but it's because I'm looking for something.
