I said I did not know enough about UNICEF to handle a press conference and she said they would not want to talk about it they would only want to talk about films.
We've been working with the very best in the business. The studio really just let us alone to make the films.
I was frustrated because I couldn't get going, as I was trying to figure out how to make films. I had various jobs, I taught a SAT class, I was a bartender, I had a day job at an office and was making short films.
My favorite books, art pieces, films, and music, always have something jarring about them.
My family don't watch a lot of what I do. Films are a bit too arty-farty for them, certainly the ones I do!
Acting was something I always wanted to try. I just didn't know how, or I didn't know when the door was gonna be open for me to try it. But it finally opened up for me when I did 'Turn It Up', and ever since then I've been in love with doing films.
I love shooting French films because I don't have to stick with being sophisticated or stuck-up.
I've done scenes in films that I felt like the performance was better in certain takes, but they couldn't use them because it didn't match what the person was doing when they came around and the camera was on them.
The films that I do are deep, introspective, brooding roles that you're in this heavy headspace all the time.
You go overseas and people are oppressed and scared and worried but we're not like that... we're more like my films and how people come out at the end of seeing them - they feel good.
I get uncomfortable and kind of scared sometimes of certain public situations because, since I've been on TV or I've appeared in some films, people think this boundary between us has been removed, and I owe them something.
I'm such a fan of actors and also enjoy watching them work so that I can help their acting in any way I can. Sometimes it walks a tricky line because you want to be entertaining to some degree. But honesty is always entertaining to me. I'm a big Woody Allen and Spike Lee fan, and I find their films to be very honest.
All my films I have shot in chronological order - always. And the reason is that there's a moment that the screenplay is the notion of the film. But when you start doing a film... the work itself starts being transformed, and you have to surrender.
It is very easy to make clear what you want a film to say, but I did not wish to engage in overt propaganda, even for the right cause. I wanted to create an experience through the films, something where people could have the freedom of their own response to them.
I've always believed in populating my films with characters who we like, who we have some warmth for, who have warmth for each other, who we would like to hang out with, who we emulate in one way or another.
I know a lot of people who enjoy rap music who aren't black. You can't just say it's black music. To segregate films the way Hollywood likes to segregate films, ultimately everyone loses.
I just don't see very many films. Because I make them.
There have been 14 versions that I can find of Burke & Hare movies. They have all been horror films and all the movies have taken place in Victorian times, which doesn't make any sense.
I'm a big fan of Albert Brooks, Nichols and May. I'd like to follow in their footsteps and do comedy films.
Today's films are so technological that an actor becomes starved for roles that deal with human relationships.
I don't smoke and I don't want to smoke. I am not a fan of gratuitous smoking in films.
There were certain films where I went, 'Oh, my God, I'm doing a movie.'
For 'Prometheus,' I came back to a very simple question that haunted me that appears in the first 'Alien,' and no one answered in subsequent Alien films: who was the 'Space Jockey' - the big guy in the seat? If you really go into that, it becomes the basis for a pretty interesting story.
TV is sort of the only way to go for an actress my age to make a decent salary; with independent films, you just can't.
I've made films that I've given all I had to, that no one has seen. The bottom line is I want to work and I want someone to enjoy it.
I turn up in Los Angeles every now and then, so I can get some big money films in order to finance my smaller money films.
I don't really like the Oscars; it's a commercial promotional event. It helps immeasurably to sell films, but it's hardly the Nobel prize.
I mean, everyone says Citizen Kane. It isn't that great, anyway. And Orson Welles I knew well, of course. He made other incredible films that no one would let him make, which were much better than Citizen Kane, really.
Most films seem to be about a man and a women falling in love at some point and once you pass forty-five, it's almost disgusting to fall in love.
I think one of the reasons 'Gremlins' lasts and some other films don't is because I don't think the movie has a whole lot of dated things - sure, the cars, my hair, and few things here and there that date the movie - but it takes place in a sort of everytown, in a sorta non-specific time, and that gives the movie a timeless quality.
Redford always has been a cool presence both before and behind the camera. His best movie as a filmmaker, 1994's 'Quiz Show,' exhibits a classicism verging on self-repression, and the social indignation in many of his films engages more than moves you.
To get an Oscar would be an incredible moment in my career, there is no doubt about that. But the 'Lord of the Rings' films are not made for Oscars, they are made for the audience.
A lot of student directors used to pick other students to be in their graduate films, so. I ended up doing a couple of them just for fun. Eventually, I got an agent through a friend and I did some commercials; then I got Knots Landing.
There's no doubt that some of the greatest films ever made have come from the theater. It's all a matter of finding a way to make the theater experience watchable on film.
Films like 'Velvet Goldmine' are an accumulation of research and references. I create an almost random resource of connections and am constantly distilling that into narrative specifics.
But I've worked where they've had animals before, and animal wranglers, the people who raise animals and train animals for films and television, they're all very, very professional.
