“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.”

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.

A life lived in fear is a life half lived.

I do find walking is fundamental to my creative process.

My wife is the fact-checker, I’m in the story telling business.

I feel a kinship with anyone who feels that their road, their life or who they really are is not good enough. I really relate to that.

It’s pretty hard to get mugged in Manhattan.

At a very young age I was allowed to go into the cinema and watch adult films.

If Paris is a city of lights, Sydney is the city of fireworks.

The ugly duckling is a misunderstood universal myth. It’s not about turning into a blonde Barbie doll or becoming what you dream of being; it’s about self-revelation, becoming who you are.

Why live life from dream to dream, and dread the day when dreaming ends.

Opera was the cinema of its time, so to bring back that popular appeal, you just need to unleash its visceral immediacy and excitement. Most productions don’t manage that – but when an opera does do it, you never forget it.

Look, I had a passion for comic books growing up.

Having grown up far, far away in a small country town in Australia, I was only slightly aware of hip-hop.

So you’re doing that the first two or three screenings, and then finally, you dial the movie in and it’s working, and at that point, it’s 50/50 as far as what’s funny and what’s working.

When I think about literature, I think about it in the three languages I read easily – English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

If someone offers you a three picture deal at 20 you’d take it. I would have killed for it.

I don’t think in this day and age that, aside from two or three people, there isn’t an actor who can just do one thing.

I love that magazine, man – Victoria’s Secret – and it comes, like, every three hours.

There is no way it would take gay men three hours to find Matt Damon.

As far as the grunge thing, there are three bands from Seattle that I would call true grunge.

Ive only dressed in drag three or four times.