And you know, we were talking about American identity, and where we've come from and where we are and where we're headed. We knew that we wanted to have a hopeful ending and we wanted it to be pro-community, and a pro-democracy type of movie.
As actors, we react to the material that's out there, and I probably just react more strongly to things that I feel will have some social value.
Before the days of video village a director should stand right next to the camera, look with his naked eye and if he sees something that is real to him, he'd look up at the [camera] operator and if he gives the look to indicate he'd seen it to, then you print and you'd move on.
It's an objective fact, that if you want to solve some of these huge, kind of bigger problems of extreme poverty, you have to include the women. They're the ones who will get it done.
People do things in the names of good, and in the name of ideals, but the world isn't that simple. So they end up doing things that aren't necessarily good. Even if they think they're doing the right thing, but when viewed from a different perspective they can look barbaric and crazy.
I've gotten much better at multi-tasking. It's hard, though. But, writing a script is not totally focused. You're taking little breaks, all the time. If a kid runs in, you give 'em a horsey ride. It's a pretty fluid process.
The whole thrust of theatre is different, just because the writing is so much more respected in a play. Whereas in movies - and having been the writer, I can say from experience - the writer is lower down on the food chain.
It's pretty easy to kind of lose your way. Having kids is really helpful. They kind of disabuse you of the notion of your greatness pretty quickly.
Still, the change is nearly indescribable - going from total obscurity to walking down a street in New York and having everybody turn and look; to feel the temperature of a room change when I walked in.
If your movies don't perform, they just stop calling you.
It's usually the exact same three things which are, the Scripts, the Director and the Role those are the three things I look for and really any two of them, If I get two of them that's usually enough, but definitely those are the things I look for.
I didn't grow up with great privilege, nor did I grow up wanting for anything. I was a middle-class kid and, relative to the rest of the world, that's great wealth.
I'm not Brad Pitt or George Clooney. Those guys walk into a room and the room changes. I think there's something more... not average, but everyman about me.
The better the actor, the less you know about his life. I mean, nobody's better than De Niro and you don't know anything about him, right?
The danger of course is always is caricature. The biggest challenge was to sound like Nelson Mandela. Everything else is easy to do, walk like him. He has a few ticks and things I noticed that I picked up. I didn't have any agenda, as it were, in playing the role other than to bring it as close to reality as I possibly could.
I knew very little about Rugby. But, I think it helps in terms of an American audience the game is enough like football in that it's a battle for field position and you score by running into what looks a lot like an end zone. I think in terms the nuance of the game, Americans won't get that stuff. I think in terms of the peanut butter and jelly version of what you need to know, I think it's pretty clear.
I started really young, like 12 or 13, and then I started doing school plays. We had a really good drama department, so the kind of drama-geek stigma wasn't really there in my high school.
The first time I smoked was at home with my mother and stepfather; they were like, If you are going to do this, we'd rather you did this with us.
My mother is a professor of early childhood education. When I was two she would say she knew I was going to be an actor.
You know, a one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of the country, much better.
