“Hurt him. Hurt him and save him”

You really think that on my films people tell me what to do? I don’t think so. On my films I decide.

In the ’80s, everyone wanted to be in opera. It was groovy.

One of my great all-time loves in cinema, and I’ve seen it three times, is Bondarchuk’s ‘War and Peace.’ Not a lot of people may have seen that film. It was made during the Soviet era.

Accept certain inalienable truths.

Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.

My father made sure that I had lots of levels of education – from ballroom-dancing to painting, commando training, theatre and magic.

I don’t have fights with actors. In absolute honesty, I’ve never fought with any actor ever.

Some of the greatest relationship films of all time, the two stars have hated each other, but mostly you see that chemistry.

To be honest, there is a tourists’ trail; my family had a farm and a gas station, and you can go and see my birthplace, though where I lived is actually under a freeway now.

Trust yourself that you can do it and get it

All good, clean stories are melodrama, it’s just the set of devices that determines how you show or hide it.

I grew up around jazz. I love jazz.

Fitzgerald coined the phrase the ‘Jazz Age,’ and now we’re living in the Hip-Hop Age.

The cold-audition process is not a science, so I ignore that.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself

Everything I make starts very personally.