I think a film should have a gestation period of at least two or three years.

Even if we don't know it or aren't aware of it, politics and philosophy are really what make our up lives.

It's hard to blame someone because they simply don't have time.

In India, one has to plan according to the monsoons.

They suggested I should introduce an element of reincarnation in the story. At first, I thought that was silly. But then, this whole time dimension began to fascinate me.

Conventionally, one looks at history as something of the past. But after Einstein, who knows what is in the past and what is in the present?

Eventually, the tribe developed so much confidence in me that they invited me to be their chieftain.

I like cinema audiences. I respect them, and I talk to them just like I would anybody I know.

I cannot forget a conversation that I had with an elderly couple from the tribe. They asked me whether I would kill them after I had finished. When I asked them why they asked that, they replied, Because you white men always do!

When you look at our world, the truth is that we're all under the influence of politics.

I'm not a very serious person. You know how they say that clowns are very funny in public and are really sad at home? I'm really kind of stupid at home and more serious in public.

Sitting down to a meal with an Indian family is different from sitting down to a meal with a British family.

I try to address my audiences intelligently. The man in the street counts, but sometimes he forgets that he counts.

Making the City Of Joy gave me the best political education of my life. It became a wrestling match between an Englishman who had gradually ceased to be a Marxist, and a culture that was becoming more Marxist by the day.

I think the job of movie reviewing can be really tough. If a film has layers that need to be thought about, it's easy to get missed the first time around.

The actor is concerned with his own bit of it, but the director's somehow trying to work the whole thing into a much bigger picture. It's like conducting an orchestra.

If the movie's well made and it's about things that count, people will ultimately see the depth in it.

I've never wanted to do something where I'd berate the audience.

If you spend a whole afternoon just eating popcorn and watching football, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But if that's all you do, you get swept along with the tide, without any idea of where you're going.

Good directing is about getting the performance to be just what's right for the movie.

The history of the white man in India really jumped up and bit me in the neck.

I think a film should have a gestation period of at least two or three years.

I like DVDs so much - it's such a better format than VHS.

I don't really say much about reviewers. It's a very tough job to get all of the depth of a movie all at once.

Much of Indian science seems intuitive and not bound by the rigid thinking of classical scientists.

I simply wanted to state that during this little slice of history, this is what happened and these were the good sides of it, these were the more dangerous sides of it, and this was the result.

Music is a very integral part of the film, but it will not be as full of music as a Bollywood film.

Indian culture certainly gives the Indian mind, including the mind of the Indian scientist, the ability to think out of the box.

I began to feel that, in a sense, we were all prisoners of our own history.

Very good coaches for ski jumpers stand at the top of the slope and watch the jumpers prepare, rather than standing at the bottom and watching them land.

I think that will be a lot of fun for audiences to get the same stream of consciousness that was going through my head at the time. It was very exciting to suddenly recall what I was feeling at the time.

Very good coaches for ski jumpers stand at the top of the slope and watch the jumpers prepare rather than standing at the bottom and watching them land.

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.