I hate the whole reluctant sex-symbol thing. It’s such bull. You see these dudes greased up, in their underwear, talking about how they don’t want to be a sex symbol.
I remember back when I was a kid there was a comic strip called Plastic Man. His body was elastic and he could make his extremities as long as he wanted. As a youngster I didn’t fully appreciate. But I’m now thinking Plastic Man was probably pretty popular with the ladies.
I like the incongruity of how in Iran, these people we think of as being revolutionaries or fanatics or whatever are just as aware of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader as our people are back home.
I don’t go back and look at the monitor between every take; I wait until I feel like we finally got it right: “Let me stop and look at that last one on the monitor.”
I really think that everybody would like to be an actor. Why wouldn’t they? It’s great work if you can get it. The one thing that prevents most people from saying, ‘I’m just gonna go to Hollywood!’ is that it seems unrealistic.
It’s important for me to try my hand at philanthropy because I want to leave behind a record of someone who did more than just gobble up stuff for themselves. I realized that a life lived for yourself is not much of a life.
No actor forgets the times he couldn’t get a job. I think everyone doing this operates from that fear. You don’t want that momentum to stop when you get it.
I’m sure I can make a movie that doesn’t feel like a seventies movie! But the truth is, that’s my favorite era in American filmmaking. To me, those were the great years.
