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I'm not attracted to dangerous men. I'm attracted, apparently, to height. One ex was 6'6; the one before was 6'4, then 6'3. I like freakishly tall people.
I moved from Italy to Oregon in the '80s - sort of like moving to the middle of a "Duck Dynasty" episode, which was massive culture shock to say the least.
I was never nervous directing. Not once. I'm more nervous acting. I'm far more nervous on set, before I say my lines, than I ever have been, as a director.
Some people do have a very innate sexuality to them. I may or may not have it, but it makes people see you in a certain light that has nothing to do with me.
Poe was such a tragic and brilliant figure; he's somebody whom I've been somewhat obsessed with my whole life. I first read 'The Tell-Tale Heart' at age four.
I think I ran so hard and so fast, in a lot of ways, from my life and I kind of took a fall. It was like - what do they call it? - post-traumatic stress syndrome.
I don't know how exactly but I'm maybe perverse in the sense that I like being disappointed in something on a daily basis. Because it means that I'm still not jaded.
That's my takeaway from 'Scream' - I know I can fit in dog doors. You have to jimmy your body in a certain position and really hope you're not wearing something super fancy.
My focus isn't Hollywood; my focus is using Hollywood as an example. Because what happens here does happen everywhere. It's just a really concentrated and tense version here.
The fact that I still want the best for the world is kind of amazing. People slandered me for years and years and years. I would say to them, "Thanks for having a closed mind".
It wasn't that I was shy to go out with him, I just didn't want people with preconceived notions to assume anything about why we were together. I was pretty careful for a while.
I was up watching Meet Joe Black at four AM. I was hoping Brad Pitt would die, and he was still alive at seven forty in the morning! I actually felt sorry for once, for critics.
What I do with my work is, I give women permission to be angry. Because that's our right. Because it's an emotion. Because it's been taken away from us. Because we've been silenced.
You have to be at the forefront of culture to create art, which they call "product," and Hollywood is not. It's this very old business model, which I think is dying in a lot of ways.
You have to work to carve out your own little corner, and I'm certainly smacking my head against the wall trying to make a dent. I just hope I don't get brain-damaged before I get there
They're definitely having their moment now because they know how to work the system, and I know I have to be that way, too, in order to succeed. But it's never been more frustrating for me.
Women's rights are women's rights. One of the things that woke me up was equal pay. I started thinking about it: Who is the leader of women? Take me to your leader. And there were no leaders.
A lot of times when you do things where you're killing people, the character is always having an existential crisis about it. It's fun to be no-holds-barred and have no big crisis of conscious.
I live a very international life, but when I come back to Hollywood, a town I love in a lot of ways, I have to wonder, "What decade are you in? Like, seriously, what decade? It's not this one."
If one person starts crying, I'll cry. If one person has no money, I'll give them mine. If I had a bicycle growing up, I always felt incredibly guilty when I see someone sitting at the bus stop.
I see so much beauty in people and in the world and when I see ugliness I try to either expose it or fight but also remind myself that it's mostly just people who can't spell who say mean things.
I have great luck. I'm used to people dying and going away. Not used to it exactly - but I expect it. Like, whenever people go off on a trip, I save their phone messages because I think they might die.
I did a cover for Rolling Stone the other day and it was a kind of crazy lack of outfit. I thought, "Oh, Lord. I'm never going to be Jane Austen in a film now!" 'Cause that's what I'd really like to do.
If somebody said something racist around me, or you, or most people, you would correct it, you would stop it, but when they say things about women, so frequently no one says anything. That has to change.
I did a cover for 'Rolling Stone' the other day and it was a kind of crazy lack of outfit. I thought, 'Oh, Lord. I'm never going to be Jane Austen in a film now!' 'Cause that's what I'd really like to do.
Every woman knows that any man engaging in street harassment can switch to anger very quickly and that anger goes to rage and their rage is their masculinity being threatened. We're scared for good reason.
I just felt like, "Why would you discuss my body as if it's an object?" People will come up and say things like, "Are your breasts real?" I mean, people will come up and discuss my body as if I'm not human.
I think of the kids that live on top of garbage dumps, I think of the ways we could reach out to other countries, I think of certainly climate change. There's so much. The nighttime is that time, is it not?
People get so burned out on hearing about sexism, but you know what? I would love to burn out on it. I would love to never talk about that again, but until we're all equal I shall have to fight, and remain fighting.
My whole family is very art-based. My sister runs a gallery, my other sister works for PACE in New York, my other sister is a sculptor. I'd say the ending one is me because that's the artist and the artist feels a lot.
Since I didn't grow up going to school dances, etc., I didn't have the normal . . . I grew up in a very different way so a lot of the childish concerns or teenage concerns weren't my concerns. My concerns were survival.
I have a lot of brothers and sisters, and each movie has helped pay for tuition. And then I was like, I only have one left in college, so why am I doing this? But now I want to go back to Italy and live on a farm in Tuscany.
The people that are the invisible ones, the marginalized, the quote-unquote weirdos, the people that get things thrown at them, the people that get harassed every day just for existing . . . I just still strongly align with them.
I was a boy in the ads I did as a child. My sister was the girl, and I was the boy. I had short hair and I was in overalls and I was giving flowers to my sister Daisy, who fit their model of what a girl was supposed to look like.
I was with somebody else at the time, who I left - one, because I didn't really want to be with that person, and two, because I felt I'd had so much tragedy I needed to go off, go crazy, and maybe live on the outside for a while.
Someone asked me who I would be if I were a character in the 'Wizard of Oz.' I would be the curtain. I would be the one who saw both sides that nobody noticed, that was pretty and there to be used and discarded when they were done.
If I've got a script, you think I'll go to Hollywood to get money? I was bored with the people around me, so I just created my own movie, my own character. I'm the story of my own movie, and you know what? My movie is going to be better.
I like strong, strong women who don't go down without a fight. I like iconic roles. They don't come around very often, so I have to wait for them. Obviously I'm not the typical blonde who stands by the side, while the man has all the fun.
There are moments when you act that you actually disappear from your body, and that's amazing. That's better than any drug, I would imagine. People take drugs to disappear from themself, and that's what it feels like when you hit that moment.
It's funny, honestly, by rights, with a lot of the stuff that's happened to me I should be running down the street with my hair on fire, but instead I want to shape things, and I want to shake things up. There's nothing wrong with being an agitator.
It's nice being able to speak for myself. Every interview I did for so many years and every time I was in front of the camera, pre-Twitter, there was no way for me to speak for myself. Every interview started with, 'What was it like to work for this man?'
I went to regular schools and I was home schooled a lot but I don't have any history in schools. Like, I literally don't exist. I didn't even get a birth certificate until the mid-80s. I always feel like I could be, like, 10 years younger, or maybe I'm 70!
There was a story that I was in a shoe shop and that I threw a pair of flip flops at the wall, shouting, 'I can't believe how overpriced these are!' I thought, 'Gosh, if I'm gonna take a big stand on something I would hope it would be for more than flip flops!'
I'm not really one of those people who goes and writes some big back story and agonizes over characters. I think you kind of can get it. For me personally, it's just kind of more instinctive. But I don't have kind of an acting background. I fell into it accidentally.
At 13, when I was a runaway, I was taken in by the most amazing drag queens in Portland, Ore. We didn't always know where our next meal was coming from, but there was so much camaraderie and love. Not to mention, those girls could paint a face, and I learned how because of them.
I was 13. And on my own for about 10 months, but those were long months. My stepdad wanted me out of his hair and tried to put me in a home, a hospital kind of place for kids with drug problems, which I absolutely did not belong in. So I left that place and struck out on my own...
I'd never even seen orange cheese. I mean, who decided to make that orange? And so there was something different about me that they wanted to crush. I don't think it had anything to do with my physicality, but every single day in school it was, "You're the ugliest thing I've ever seen."
Hetero - normative behavior and herd mentality is dangerous. It's okay to be different. It's okay to stand out for whatever reason. Some people are just born that way and instead of trying to tear them down, learn something new. Be curious and open because maybe that's a pathway out for you, too.
Because I do so many action-oriented films, I started working with stunt people doing fight training, then I found it to be just great exercise. Also I like to be fit, so I've continued on with fight training. Right before I got to do 'Conan,' I was fighting off four guys. Its great fun. And strange.
When I get my feelings hurt, or when things scare me, or freak out my sensibilities, or when my feathers get ruffled, it takes me aback, of course, but then I think, I'm grateful that I have a mind that can want more for people and want more for the planet. It's not that hard. It's really quite simple.