Music was never really something I wanted to do, so I never thought about it as a kid.
When I was a kid I used to want to be a Beethoven or something. That was my dream.
I never aspired to be up front. When I was a kid, I didn't ever look in the mirror with a hairbrush going, "Hey, I'm Elvis!"
And when I go around and talk to schools, what I tell the kids are, first of all, you have to accept each other's differences. Some of you are going to be a crappy football player, some of you are going to be a great mathematician. Whatever it is, accept each other's differences and help prop each other up.
Kids are shy and they often don't want to make eye contact or say "thank you."
Every once in a while, someone would call me a foreigner or a Yankee, or whatever. In the United States, someone might say something, like how kids do, to point out that you're different. That would come as a surprise to me. As you get old, you either get defensive about it or you accept it and you reach out, because you realize the world's full of people like that.
The only thing that I always do - is once I've taken on a job, even just to do one scene in a movie, I ask myself, "What's happened the moment the kid was born, until page one of the script?" To answer that simple question, I have an infinite amount of work to do. And I enjoy that part as much as I enjoy any part of making movies.
I grew up with horses when I was a kid in Argentina. I like them. I respect them. I'm careful around them. You never know what they're going to do. They're endlessly interesting. I've had some good acting partners that were horses over the years.
Adult characters are all the things they've encountered over time. But kids haven't accumulated all the life experience, all the regrets. They tend to be more in the moment, more willing to play, to be joyful.
Looking at acting, in the movies or the theater, and the way I like to look at it, it’s just an extension of childhood play… Kids play and imagine in a very intense fashion and they don’t need any director telling them “You really have to believe in it.” They believe in it completely.
Everyone always says that having kids is messy and sloppy. It's true, but you as a parent have to try to bring some boundaries and control over that experience, or you'd have out-of-control kids.
I think as I have got older, I have got a bit more relaxed, although you might not think that if you heard me screaming at my kids.
That's what I love about kids. They don't care about anything else but who you are as a person.
Jaws' was the definitive filmmaking turning point for me. It came out in the summer of '75 and I saw it an obsessive 55 times. They even ran a very embarrassing article about me in the local paper, about the weird kid who's seen 'Jaws' 55 times.
When I was a kid, I didn't collect stamps, or weird toys, or anything. I don't even have music - I don't even have a CD collection. So that's not really my thing.
I knew what type of player I was: a free agent, a small kid who came from a small school.
As a kid, my grandma would be dancing all the time.
I thought I'd have time to become a movie star. And it didn't happen, did it? We're still waiting. And they're saying, 'Don't hold your breath, kid.' Even movie stars can't get movies, you know what I mean?
I don't live through my kids. But I do know what will happen in life, and I just want them well prepared.
However I will never forget what Marion [Zimmer Bradley] did for me by accepting that first story from a stupid enthusiastic kid.
I'm thinking about anything and everything. I'm making stuff up in my head, I'm using sense memory. Sometimes when it doesn't come and you've got no choice because you're getting paid to do it, you grasp at straws. It's always easy now with my kids. I just create some "what-ifs" in my head, something horrible that would devastate me as a mother.
I guess some kids around me had to grow up quickly, had all those problems. But I wasn't one of those kids, or around those kids, not at all.
I was in a couple punk bands as a kid. I did some more experimental stuff with my friend Dan for a few years.
All my friends were black and Mexican. I was the only white kid in our group and had to work hard to be accepted. Year after year, we'd breakdance and we all became close and they labeled me "Vanilla" - like "Hey, Vanilla" and they knew I hated it, so of course they kept calling me it.
Once you're a mom, whether you're kids are next to you or far away from you, you're always a mom.
