Generally Canadian films are smaller. I think the market here is a tenth of the size of the States. So there's less resources to put into the films.

This is something particular to actors, especially in plays, and in films, too - but in plays, it's like, don't get involved with anyone in the play.

So as I was growing up, my father was always in the middle of making a film or preparing a film. It was a full-time, all-consuming type of operation.

There was one titanic guiding light on the film set, and I was in the presence of a true Mahatma, in the deepest and most profound sense of the word.

I look OK. I look better in person than I do on film, which is bad because it's how I make my living, but I am not a beauty and on balance I am glad.

Having portrayed English-speaking Indian characters in British and American projects, I have always wanted to use my mother tongue in an Indian film.

Generally, I've never known quite how to fit in in civilian life, but on set, making a film, I know exactly where to go, how to behave and how I fit.

My films are of paramount importance to me, the same as my family. That's not going to change. This is a balance I have to strike throughout my life.

[Jack Reacher] is the longest I'd ever shot anything - and let's be clear, this is my first studio feature film - so there was a huge learning curve.

When you think of a particular director, you think you would have liked to be with them on one particular film and not necessarily on some other one.

Take my wife... please. I'm not saying she's ugly, but when she went to see a horror film, the audience thought she was making a personal appearance.

The process of making an independent film is like building a mini Eiffel Tower with popsicle sticks - it doesn't happen overnight, and it's not easy.

Being on a film set, you are always around such fantastic people. And I feel like I've been lucky. I feel like I've worked with the best of the best.

Room 10 [a short film she codirected with Andrea Buchanan] nailed my personal theme: love and choosing to stay in the room when the going gets tough.

What happens between action and cut for me is a blur, I go almost into a whiteout, and then I see the film and I'm like, "Oh that's what I did? Cool!"

I have to make a living, and I have been in a few films I wish I hadn't been in, but I don't know where things will lead me next, and that's exciting.

We've seen so many films now, that you have to be on par with the best films that have preceded you. You just can't make any movie and it will be good

All my films have found distribution and prestige in the Japanese market, so I actually feel my films are very well received and seldom misunderstood.

Patti [Smith] was my experiment, to be honest. And the film is what we got out of it. At the end of the day, I learned a lot about how to make a film.

I wanted to make a movie about a black family in Middle America. I wanted to make a film where everyone can look at them and say, 'This is my family.'

I've always been a follower of silent movies. I see film as a visual medium with a musical accompaniment, and dialogue is a raft that goes on with it.

If you're playing around with a film, you're just playing around with it. But if it has to go into theaters, you get yourself into gear and finish it.

Movies are not about the weekend that they're released, and in the grand scheme of things, that's probably the most unimportant time of a film's life.

When I first heard of it, I thought it was a horror film. 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' is such a strange name. I wasn't into the comic books at all.

I don't think I make genre movies. There is a certain type of violence in my films but I think I have my own genre because I made it happen like that.

[Zwarte Piet] is unfortunate, and just like the early American blackface films, if it offends a segment of the population, it shouldn't be shown again.

I saw the title as a way of conditioning the audience, so that when the film actually began, viewers would already have an emotional resonance with it.

The more that I see the sexism and misogyny that's coming at me from every direction, the less I think my films have anything to do with sexploitation.

There's the concept that if I do this big budget project, then that will help me do the things I really want to do and bring more money to those films.

I'm like the king of the low-budget sequel. People ask, 'What film are you gonna do next?' 'I don't know, but it's probably got a 3 or 4 in the title.'

I'm sure the movie industry is going up but I would love to see more Chinese films about contemporary Chinese about the problems of life on the street.

It's very rare to get a film script that has good dialogue. A lot of the time, you spend on film sets really fighting to find out how to say the words.

[Julie Marie Pacino]is a great ballplayer, which I wanted to be. She did make four films by the time she was 14 but we're not going to talk about that.

The work is the work. The work is not me. I like the anonymity that directors can have about their films. Even though it's my voice, I'm a storyteller.

I'm always watching films. The Academy pretty much sends me every film that's ever been done. I enjoy watching them, especially with the people I know.

Even back in the '90s, I shot certain things on something that wasn't digital then, but it was on VHS with a smaller camera and we would up it to film.

I don't know what the character is going to be. We sit down and we create a character, and all of the characters in all of my films are made like that.

It's a required part of your film history to know who Woody is. His movies are so wonderful, and not just funny but so insightful about human behavior.

What I know is that I am honest about my films, and my films are honest about reality. The stories themselves dictate the way that they should be told.

I learned what I really love is making films, not the film business. I want to be on the set, meeting with writers, I want that freedom. I love it now.

An artist makes a painting, and nobody bugs him or her about it. It's just you and your painting. To me, that's the way it should be with film as well.

To his credit John Wayne was open about it, he even portrayed a member of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in a film called 'Big Jim McClain.'

For me it sounds weird saying that the filmmakers respect the film. I don't imagine that there's other ways to make a film, but unfortunately there is.

You learn after you've been in the business for a while that it's not getting your face recognized that's the payoff. It's having your film remembered.

In every film, whether it's a fictional character or not, you create an idea of the character and for me I always do a bad impersonation to start with.

When you look at my film you see footage that is unbelievably awesome and beautiful and dangerous looking. It's something that is very, very cinematic.

Films are hard to make and I think the word indulge really leads one to believe that it's an easy sort of business and it's really extremely difficult.

Every film may not be appropriate for a theatrical release, and the theatrical business is not a very good business for anybody except the distributor.

There was a film that really affected me, 'La Strada' by Fellini, where Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina travel around on his little motorcycle thing.

I'm so touched that complete strangers will send me a script asking me to be in their film. That still amazes me - and sometimes for a lot of money too.

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