I would definitely return to Austria. They were all good experiences for me, but definitely Austria because there were some ancient Celtic, sacred sites that were in the forest that were quite beautiful.
I'm not afraid to play ugly - look at 'Adaptation.' I looked like a turd that a cat had coughed up.
I like fantasy. I like horror, science fiction because I can get avant-garde with those performances in those movies.
For me, acting was a way of taking destructive energy and doing something productive with it, and in that way it was quite a life saver.
I invite the entire spectrum, shall we call it, of feeling. Because that is my greatest resource as a film actor. I need to be able to feel everything, which is why I refuse to go on any kind of medication. Not that I need to! But my point is, I wouldn't even explore that, because it would get in the way of my instrument.
I have dogs, and it's no secret that I find reptiles interesting, but the thing about reptiles is that they really just wanna be left alone, and I understand them. It's, 'Don't pick me up, stop holding me, don't look at me, just leave me alone.' I have to admit, sometimes I feel like that.
I knew I wanted to be an actor when I was very young. I guess I was about 6 years old at the time, and I was fascinated by television. I started having waking fantasies where I was in a movie and there were crane shots of me during a scene.
I know there's been a lot that's been said about animated voice work, as though it's 'you can do this in your jeans and there's no camera and no pressure there. It's no big deal. It's easy.' The truth is, it's really a great test: how deep is your ability is to access your imagination?
I like movies where you feel like you're going into another world, and no matter how many times you watch it, you're gonna see something new in that world. That level of detail really inspires me.
I loved 'Fantasia' as a kid because it filled me with wonder, enchantment and awe. It was my first real introduction into classical music. It was totally inspiring to me.
I happen to still like really dark, dramatic, fractured characters. They're the reason I got into movies.
I think that 'Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance' was mentally taxing, if only because I had to go to a Christmas party shortly after I had wrapped photography in Romania at two in the morning as the Ghost Rider. The invitation had a Christmas ornament on it with Ghost Rider's face on it as a tree.
I want to make all kinds of movies. I do want to make big movies that are a lot of fun to go to, but I also want to make movies that are going to stimulate some thought and maybe raise some awareness.
I'm not really gadget oriented. I'm not into technology or computers. I'm not good at interfacing with that sort of gear.
I came out of independent film, that's my roots.
When you start a movie, it's not like other kinds of work that you have when you know your boss for years or colleagues for years. You're meeting everyone, mostly, for the first time. You have to get comfortable with those people so you can perform, because the first thing that is going to shut you down is any kind of anxiety.
I got into film acting because I wanted to be James Dean. We lost him at a very young age - he was only 24 - but I’m 51 going on 52, so there's only so many times you can act like James Dean. I had to find new ways of expressing myself that kept me fascinated with film performance.
I really would like to be able to face all my superstitions that may have existed and walk under the ladder and do everything you're not supposed to do.
I was very happy with Vampire's Kiss, which in my opinion was almost like an independent laboratory to start realizing some of my more expressionistic dreams with film performance. Then using what I had learned in Vampire's Kiss and putting it into a very big action movie in the form of Face/Off with John Woo. If you look at those two movies back to back, you can see where I stole from my performance in Vampire's Kiss.
I find it inspiring and I always think when I'm working on something new, whether it's a new kind of character or a new kind of story or new kind of camera, it gets my creative wheels spinning.
I had been making a lot of family oriented movies, which I also like. But I still have a passion for the midnight audience and for midnight movies.
When you have 400 people watching you making a movie, it doesn't go where you want it to go. It's a lot of pressure.
The most meaningful movies I can make are the ones where parents can share them with their children and children can look forward to sharing them with their parents, a ritual if you will, where they get to spend time together and the kids are smiling.
I want to try to apply my abilities sometimes to make families happy, so I have to make movies at a venue that are not gratuitously violent, that are not using bullets and bloodshed, but are using things like magic and fantasy and enchantment and the imagination. To me that's just all positive stuff. But I am eclectic and I still like to make movies for the midnight audience as well.
I just try to keep it fresh. I try to keep it interesting. The truth is my roots are independently spirited dramas that are small, and I will always go back to that well, because that's where I broke out of. But I'm going to keep doing as many different movies as I possibly can.
