I don't actually think I'm treated unfairly or anything. If anything, I sometimes can't understand why I don't see myself and the people I know represented more in films. Unless I'm going to go out and write them myself, I don't feel like I can really complain about it.
I grew up cinematically in the '70s. I was watching a lot of Godard, Bresson, Dreyer, and all sorts of old films and the Czech New Wave.
I find it very interesting these days that films are bringing in so many people of different ethnicities, and I'm proud to be a part of that cultural shift.
I can remember the moment when I suddenly felt that the camera was a living partner. I suddenly felt this is art, and the camera is a co-operative living person. After that I was extremely happy to act in films.
I did a lot of stuff before I became known for horror. I did a lot of small films in the '70s, in all kinds of styles. I worked with all kinds of people when I was just starting out: I was incredibly lucky.
In documentary films, the most difficult thing to achieve is to make something complex appear simple.
I want to play around with my looks. It's very boring to appear the same in all your films. Then people are looking not at the character but at the actor.
I love doing comedy, and that's the thing I will always go back to, really, but I'd love to have the freedom to do sort of 'meaty' roles but also have the freedom to do the sort of films I want to make, like what Woody Allen does. You forget he's funny because you're so gripped by the story, but they still make you laugh.
Accept it or not, every star, actor, and director wants to work on larger-than-life films.
I love films like 'Deliverance' where you can watch it over and over again and decode all of its many different meanings.
Over-the-knee socks remind me of the 1920s, silent films, and the stars of the era who wore the rolled-down stockings. They sort of referenced that in 'Cabaret,' when Liza Minnelli was singing 'Mein Herr,' and I love the way she looks in that scene.
The question is - did Richard Attenborough have a right to make 'Gandhi?' And did Danny Boyle have a right to make 'Slumdog Millionaire?' Quite honestly, if they didn't have the right to make these films, I had no right to make 'Elizabeth.'
The films Sony Pictures Classics has distributed throughout the years have been of great inspiration to me. I'm very excited to find such a great home for 'The Rider.'
As much as I like watching horror films, I never thought I would act in them.
I've actually been given a great gift. When I walk into an audition with a director, I'm carrying no baggage. They haven't seen me in anything, even though I've done nine films.
I love silent cinema but don't hold it sacred. Like any branch of film there are some very boring films alongside the masterpieces.
Seven out of my nine films were hits. 80 per cent of the audience loves my films; the remaining 20 per may be right in their opinion, but that doesn't make me wrong. If I try too hard to woo them, I'd be cheating my core audience.
When I was coming up with the Hal Hartley films, I was cast as a no one. I had no name visibility. I was working at a downtown post-performance-art, avant garde theater company and doing a couple things on television. But I was a total unknown.
My favorite movies are gory horror films. I love Faulkner. I wanted to see the most painful things possible.
My background is in largely in theatre and acting. I grew up in a town with a well-respected Shakespeare Festival, and I fell in with some kids whose parents worked there. We staged all-kid versions of 'Hamlet', 'Cymbeline', a few others. All the while, I was making short films; monster movies, slapstick comedies, claymation.
With portable cameras and affordable data and non-linear digital editing, I think this is a golden age of documentary filmmaking. These new technologies mean we can make complicated, beautifully crafted and cinematic films about real-life stories.
I always looked up to great actors and great films. A lot of my family would be like, 'Come on, you should get into these plays that are going on.' I'm like, 'Nah, nah, music's my thing.' I just fell into it. I moved to Atlanta, got with an agency out there, started doing little voiceover commercials, and it started getting kind of fun.
Get out and make films. There are so many cameras now to suit any budget, so there are no excuses.
I love Billy Wilder, and I love the way that his films can be very touching and very moving and very romantic, and at the same time there's always a little cynical undertone, there's always something that undercuts things.
I am blessed to have worked in big-budget films at an early stage of my career.
I've made some films for the military that are teaching things like cultural awareness and leadership issues, that sort of stuff. And try to, in essence, look at what training they're doing and say, 'This is how you can improve the training from a humanistic point of view.'
I've been blessed to get the kind of films I have done.
I don't know whether everybody likes the films that I do. I know that I love them, and I believe the way that I raise my kids that they will love them, and that's what most important to me.
My films are never about what Hong Kong is like, or anything approaching a realistic portrait, but what I think about Hong Kong and what I want it to be.
Working on films where the money's more important than the creativity, I just get a bit freaked out by that. I just don't feel comfortable.
Films don't always tell a story; some films can achieve effect just by being razzle-dazzle or rock n' roll. That's part of the fare that's out there. And that's okay. For me, I place more value on a story.
I remember being inspired myself when smaller films, whether it's 'Beasts' or 'Winter's Bone,' wound up in the Oscars lineup.
By nature, I think I am a pretty private person, and that is what is hard even doing interviews for films that I really love doing, because in some ways, it diminishes the experience that I had.
I tend to fall more into the fun horror genre than the traumatic horror genre. I love the films where you're laughing as much as screaming, but that doesn't mean I don't like the other ones.
When you start out, you have to make compromises, which include doing films of lower quality.
I'm not one of those people who sees documentaries as a stepping stone to doing fiction. I love documentaries and watch tons of documentaries. But, I like fiction films a lot, too.
