When I was 18, I drove from New York to California to be a movie star. Not an actor, mind you, but a movie star. Have you ever heard of anything so silly?
Oftentimes, reality is much worse than what you can put in a movie.
When you're making a movie, you don't think about the outcome. That's something I'm grateful for: whenever I go and do a new project, I never think about the outcome. It's always just about the work at hand. That's the fun part. The other part is always something I've had a struggle with, which is promoting the film. I know it's important.
I have no idea what the economics of the movie business is, especially with all the new Amazon, Netflix, Showtime, AMC, SyFy, and HBO series. But I am intrigued with what feels like a new type of show - the six-to-eight-hour movie. It's a little too long to watch in one setting, but you can watch it over a three- to five-day period.
Malayalam industry is pretty awesome, and I will definitely do a movie in Malayalam. There are some great directors over there.
I'm all about surprises. If you watch a horror movie, and it's called 'Kiss Land,' it's probably going to be the most terrifying thing you've ever seen in your life.
Sometimes I get to see a movie that's adapted from a book that I haven't heard about or that I love the movie so much that I will, of course, read the book.
There was a time when you would dream about, say, movie stars. Now, you virtually follow them into their bathroom when they're going to the loo.
Every time I go to a movie, it's magic, no matter what the movie's about.
'Life Aquatic' was the first movie I did, and it's been an incredible adventure since then.
Frank called me one day and said, 'I have an idea for a movie, why don't you come over and I'll tell you?' So I went over and we sat down and he said, 'This picture starts in heaven'. That shook me.
In Torch Song, I did that character almost non-stop from 1978 until I made the movie in 1987. Then I had some failure, which also colors how you react to doing other things.
That's the most important thing to me - that if I'm gonna spend however long it takes to make a movie, give up 14 hours a day for however many weeks or months, then it's very important for me to know that I'm working with people who I respect and enjoy and that we're going for something together.
I've always believed that the best way you combat intellectual property theft is making a product available that is well priced, well timed to market, whether it's a movie product, TV product, music product, even theme-park product.
I say I'm the best actor in America who's never done a movie.
Actually, I met a lot of directors and most of them have that fantasy to make a silent movie because for directors it's the purest way to tell a story. It's about creating images that tell a story and you don't need dialogue for that.
What was bizarre, when I was younger, I never watched TV. I would rather watch a movie 100 times than to watch a TV show, just to find another nuance. I can't tell you how many times I've watched 'On the Waterfront', just to find a flaw so that I can learn and try to improve my thing.
My very first role was the character of Barbara Winslow in the movie 'Marmaduke.' Up until that point, I had only done commercials. I had never done a guest star role or a series, and yet they cast me!
I quit smoking the day I found out I was pregnant, which was nine years ago. But I'll still smoke in a movie. I have other vices, you know, like potato chips and chardonnay - but not together.
As somebody who makes his living in the movie business and wants to contribute to it, I think that the best chance I have of doing that is just consistently working with great directors.
The movie, 'Remember the Titans,' is my favorite movie, staring Denzel Washington. I love the way in this movie the game of football brings those boys together, it unites those boys on that football field. It unites a whole town, black, white, old, young, rich and poor.
When I was a kid, it wasn't very often that I could go to the movies and see an entire movie carried on the shoulders of someone who looked like me.
Often, in the movie business, they need somebody who will garner box office because they need to pay for the movie. So the people who are in movies that make a lot of money are the people who most often get cast in studio pictures. In my career, I've never been a box office name.
I learn more from the audience than I can from anybody else. Not from what they write on the scorecards, but how they respond to the movie while they're watching it - where they laugh and where they react.
I'd love to do a superhero movie, like a remake of Wonder Woman.
I'm a writer and director, and the movie I've seen a million times is 'Stardust Memories' by Woody Allen, starring Woody Allen and Charlotte Rampling.
There's nothing I've ever worked on that beat 'Game of Thrones' - that's a 10-hour movie; they put a lot of money in it.
I'm an adventurer. There are so many things I'd like to do. I'd love to do an Angelina Jolie and dress in lycra and kick the crap out of somebody in a movie. It doesn't matter how rubbish the script is.
To come into my world, I've got some M&Ms and some potato chips, and I'm asking you to move furniture. We're making a movie. We're making it like we're putting on a play.
I just don't know that a TV show demands a movie ending.
I'd get bored if I... if I had to do a movie, and there was no love story in it, I would just be bored. I mean, I would do it, but it would be kind of boring.
There's been times when I've been standing in a line at a movie and someone's hit me with something really heavy about someone really close and how our music has helped them get through it. Even in our darkest moments we try and find something beautiful.
I wasn't perfect and didn't have it together. I felt alone. So through acting, I decided to be a shape shifter and with every role become the character instead of being myself. It meant about 10 years of no one knowing I was the same person in every movie.
Movie characters rarely get to think out loud or talk very much about their emotions. Instead they have to, very briefly, show their feelings through their action or through dialog.
I'm kind of a grandma, so I like cooking for my boyfriend and watching a movie. I cook a lot, actually. I'll make bacon-wrapped asparagus, steak, and pesto pasta with chicken...but we go out to dinner a fair amount, too.
I have a romantic vision of the beautiful delineation between TV and film that existed for so many years. I romanticize the studio system and movie stars as a whole, but obviously that's just anachronistic and probably a non-reality.
