And that's another reason to make this movie: We can put plays on film now, at a relatively small cost, and they will reach an audience they would never have reached otherwise.

Somehow I think it was declared very early on that I was the - if not the black sheep of the family, not a very good student.

The two basic items necessary to sustain life are sunshine and coconut milk.

Life stinks, but that doesn't mean you don't enjoy it.

For me as an American, the most painful aspect of this is that I believe that that administration has taken the events of 9/11 and has manipulated the grief of the country and I think that's reprehensible.

Myth is supposed to bring us together, but fantasy alienates us.

Blame is for God and small children.

One thing about being successful is that I stopped being afraid of dying. Once you're a star you're dead already. You're embalmed.

I mean, I don't think I'm alone when I look at the homeless person or the bum or the psychotic or the drunk or the drug addict or the criminal and see their baby pictures in my mind's eye. You don't think they were cute like every other baby?

I envy people who can just look at a sunset. I wonder how you can shoot it. There is nothing more grotesque to me than a vacation.

I decided to become an actor because I was failing in school and I needed the credits.

And that's another reason to make this movie: We can put plays on film now, at a relatively small cost, and they will reach an audience they would never have reached otherwise.

I believe - though I may be wrong, because I'm no expert - that this war is about what most wars are about: hegemony, money, power and oil.

There's a rebirth that goes on with us continuously as human beings. I don't understand, personally, how you can be bored. I can understand how you can be depressed, but I just don't understand boredom.

I feel cheated never being able to know what it's like to get pregnant, carry a child and breast feed.

I did some writing and bought a book, and have been working on that as a film to act and direct in.

If you have this enormous talent, it's got you by the balls, it's a demon. You can't be a family man and a husband and a caring person and be that animal. Dickens wasn't that nice a guy.

Well first of all, it's hard to shoot a movie and break for a long time and then come back and do, in a sense, one of the biggest scenes that each character had.

I stopped working a few years ago because I just lost a spark that I'd had before. I thought I'd just try writing, and maybe start directing, but I did it very quietly.

Well this is aptly called a junket, for both of us. I have never been to a house of prostitution, but I understand that you get in more than seven minutes.

So when I told my parents I wanted to go into acting because I was flunking out of my first year of junior college, they were relieved that I had picked something other than joining the army. But I can't imagine how they had high hopes for me.

In my room as a kid... I'd play a fighter and get knocked to the floor and come back to win.

I think the most insulting thing you can do to a director is to challenge when he or she is satisfied with your interpretation.

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.

I did a movie called Marathon Man and it was one of my best memories.

If there is no direct threat why are we invading?

We need to band together as a unit every day, especially to conquer the strength of the AIDS virus.

Euthanasia is legal in Hollywood. They just kill the film if it doesnt succeed immediately.

Myth is supposed to bring us together but fantasy alienates us.

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!