Traffic is one of the most powerful films to come out in recent years. It blew me away.
I can't say that I am a DVD junkie. I see most films that I want to see in the theater, and so most of my DVD-watching is catching up with the occasional movies that I missed or revisiting a film that I really care about, in which case I really want the extra channels, because it's a movie that I already love, and I want to know more about it.
I usually play character parts in Hollywood films.
I love all kinds of movies. I love a really good comedy and not the cheesy ones. My parents hate this, but I love horror films. Those are my favorite, and of course, dramatic roles. I'm really drawn to those as well. All different genres.
There's an abundance of exposure when you start working in American films. Inevitably you become a brand and that has to be controlled.
To expose the hardships experienced by children who are deprived of the right to attend school, Camfed has produced a series of films about educational exclusion. 'Every Child Belongs in School' provides a glimpse into the lives of children who have been forced by poverty to leave school at a very young age and take a difficult life path.
I think horror films in the past maybe touched on social themes having to do with whatever era in which they were made, but in the end, it's definitely an escapist form of entertainment.
Saturday night at my house, I often trot out classic movies and force the urchins to watch them. There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but I think it's important to teach kids about American culture, and films are certainly a big part of it.
A good horror movie - it doesn't matter how many comedy horror films there have been before. Doesn't matter how much you think it's going to be funny. A good horror movie will scare the hell out of you... the moment you sit down and you start being exposed to that story, it's going to freeze your blood.
Latinos don't go out and support their own films, but at the same time, it's not their responsibility.
Most films I've worked on have had large casts, but they've been wonderful people. I think the monkey in Pirates of the Caribbean is the most temperamental costar I've had. It would throw tantrums like you wouldn't believe.
I like to take risks and do weird things and stuff that's not normal compared to other Hollywood movies. Not stuff that's totally avant garde and daring, but doing stuff that's in other languages and not using stars and using real people - things that they generally don't do in mainstream films.
That's when it becomes a business. When you've been public a long time, when it's a career. You do certain films, you sell them.
American movies are often very good at mining those great underlying myths that make films robustly travel across class, age, gender, culture.
I rarely give interviews. I am against doing television interviews or chatting on the Net, even to promote my films. This is my personal decision, and it is not to hurt or embarrass anybody.
Certainly, I've loved musicals for a while, so I did some short films in college that had musical numbers and things like that, so I've kind of been obsessed with Fred and Ginger and Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen and Jaques Demy forever.
After having acted in films down south, I always wanted to work on the small screen but couldn't say yes to everything that was being offered to me.
I feel that David took a risk with me. I have a sense that by starting off in the theatre and going off to do films you are seen to sell out in some way. I don't hold truck with that, but you can't stop people from feeling it.
I realize I'm a very lucky man. I love what I do, I love films, TV and theater, and the fact that I'm able to make a living at it staggers me.
We were asked to believe that the variety and the novelty of even the crude films of the early days would provide a means of entertainment which would cut out the stage.
I met my wife and, for the next ten years, we did no films at all. She did the first movie and then I did several after. My first movie was written by Tennessee Williams and directed by Kazan and was called Baby Doll.
I've liked most of the films that I've been in and those are the kinds of films I like to see.
If I give five flops, I won't get a job. You have to perform at the box office when you are at the top. No one is running a charity here. People are putting huge amounts of money to make movies, and they want the films to be successful. They have invested money in you, so it is your duty to make sure the film does well.
With horror movies, a bigger budget is actually your enemy. You want to feel the rough edges, the handmade quality to good horror films. It's a genre that benefits from not having everything at your disposal.
I had starred in more than 30 successful films, six in a row directed by Cecil B. De Mille.
I get unhappy doing things that I'm not passionate about. Because I feel like I'm squandering this incredible gift I've been given to finance films. As soon as my name alone was enough to make this happen, I vowed to myself that I was going to work with directors who were changing cinema, doing something important, you know?
Like, I'm a big fan of films from the '70s, like Cassavetes and things, where they just keep the dialogue really loose and just kind of roll, you know what I mean?
I kind of realize that I have a tendency to choose the kind of films I watched when I was a kid and would go home and pretend with my friends that we were in those movies after we saw them.
I think I'm more bonded, emotionally and in a craft sense, to films that tell extraordinary stories about extraordinary destinies.
I've made a lot of stupid action films. But when we made The Matrix, we saw that people wanted more than that.
I just want to make great films and be good in them. And I think that my perception of what's great in a film is constantly evolving.
The so-called 'last golden age,' in the 1970s, most of those movies were independent films.
I'm in the process of working out an arrangement to make some very, very, very small films in the midst of all these films and maybe that will help. But you get tired of talking. You just want to do it.
My parents were huge fans of westerns, European cinema, and horror in particular. They wouldn't just show me kids' films.
Undeniably the American art form, too. And yet more and more, we see films made that diminish the American experience and example. And sometimes trash it completely.
The entertainment options for young people are a lot broader now, and the quality of films is slumping a little bit.
