When I go to where I was getting excellent parts in movies I may have taken a few too soon, too anxious to go back to work and to anxious to make another film and to succeed more.

It takes a lot of energy to teach.

I have a theory about that, if you have to say something, if you have encourage for one second a prospective acting student - he should not go in to acting.

I didn't have any extra money. But I can't say that I had a hard early career.

When I go to where I was getting excellent parts in movies I may have taken a few too soon, too anxious to go back to work and to anxious to make another film and to succeed more.

I work with Sally and I can see Sally doing that. She is very aggressive. Very fun loving and charming... and pushy in a very competitive way and a very healthy way and a very good actress.

But movies as much as anything developed what I thought was right and wrong, what was honorable, what wasn't, what was funny what wasn't... what had some depth to it, what didn't.

I was very lucky in as much as I played a lot of tennis.

Well Sid Pollack was... He was I would say probably, probably the most influential on me.

The next night I got on an airplane, and flew to New York and looked into acting schools. Four or five acting schools. One of which was the Neighborhood Playhouse, which I started at six months there after.

I think is very beneficial to relax yourself so that when you are doing it you are not staggering for lines and your concentration is not on what I am going to say - but the scene itself, the character that you are talking to.

I did two or three plays every summer.

No not pigeon holed me as an actor, or as a character, or as to what I could do - but what I would do... and the fact is the things you don't do are almost as important as as the things that you do.

There is something about New York City that in and of itself is so theatrical hat I use to think... I use to feel when I walked out of my apartment on the way to school or anywhere that I was walking out on stage.

I think that you get something for your acting from almost anything you do.

But it is a hard, it's a hard profession teaching acting.

I have worked with some great directors.

To tell you the truth I am hard put to think of anyone who's career was affected significantly by making all those phone calls and I must be wrong. I must be wrong! Because it has just got to pay off!

But I did make some money doing commercials. I did fourteen in one year.

But it was this tough little character part that I was playing, a very funny little guy that I invented over a weekend, because I realized I was not contributing to the humor of this thing. And I had to do something.

I'm convinced that the place, if you have your druthers, to go to have that experience is New York City.

The career doesn't get any easier. A career stays tough.

And it just made me realize again because I have know it for some time, that you never get comfortable in this. No matter who you are. No matter who... how successful you are.

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.

I was lucky enough to occasionally break out of that racist situation that prevails in the Hollywood film production community. But it was racist then and it will always be that way. It will never be otherwise.

'Batman' took 10 months to film, and by the time I stopped working on it, it took a long time before my English accent came out again. I was actually having to try for it.

Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

It's the difficulty we had with Mr. Bean, actually, when it went from TV to film. You certainly discover that you need to explain more about a character.

To make a documentary is one thing, to make a feature film is quite another.

I mean when the play was on in New York I was starting to get film offers coming through, and since the film's come out I get offered more than I used to, but it happens incrementally.

I think it would be very boring dramatically to have a film where everybody was a lawyer or doctor and had no faults. To me, the most important thing is to be truthful.

I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.

The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film.

If he didn't fall in love he would have never come back near the end of the film. Because, what man is going to dishonor himself so that he comes back in front of the man that took a woman away from him... and warns her to save her life?

Robert Altman's Nashville is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

I have a movie coming out called Spun, which will be at the Toronto Film Fest.

Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I'll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.

And when you see it the first time you put the film together, the roughest cut, is when you want to go home and open up your veins and get in a warm tub and just go away. And then it gradually, maybe, works its way back, somewhere toward that spot you were at before.

A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.

My advice to young film-makers is this: don't follow trends, start them!

The whole aspect of cinema and film festivals should be a moment to come together and celebrate art and humanity. It would be a shame if there was such a divide.

It's really rare for film directors to be that interested in things other than themselves.

When I said I was going to audition for a film, I got a hearty laugh from all my family.

I don't think any actor feels comfortable watching themselves in movies. You must be very narcissistic. The problem with your own opinion of yourself is that contrary to the normal spectators, when you watch a film you are in, you only watch yourself.

We're making a commercial Hindi film catering to all types of audiences.

They all matter to me, whether I'm working on a Sam Jackson film for a week or I'm the star of my own TV series - I take it all very seriously, and I have a healthy respect for the work in general, despite the role.