“My parents said, Oh, he’s going to be a director someday. I wanted to be an actor.”

I’ve always considered myself a filmmaker who writes stuff for himself to do.

I don’t judge my characters, and that’s my job not to judge them. It’s my job to treat them with respect and to just look at it from their point of view.

My only obligation is to my characters. And they came from where I have been.

You don’t have to know how to make a movie. If you truly love cinema with all your heart and with enough passion, you can’t help but make a good movie.

I steal from every movie ever made.

If I’m doing my job right, then I’m not writing the dialogue; the characters are saying the dialogue, and I’m just jotting it down.

If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.

I don’t believe in putting in music as a band aid to get you over some rough parts or bad film making. If it’s there it’s got to add to it or take it to another level.

Particularly as a writer, it is my job to ignore social critics, or the response that social critics might have when it comes to the opinions of my characters, the way they talk, or anything that can happen to them.

If you just love movies enough, you can make a good one.

I have loved movies as the number one thing in my life so long that I can’t ever remember a time when I didn’t.

It’s nice to get invited to the parties and to be able to hobnob and celebrate a job well done with your colleagues.

In real life there are no bad guys. Everybody just has their own perspective.

My plan is to have a theatre in some small town or something and I’ll be manager. Ill be the crazy old movie guy.

As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. I demand the right to be them, I demand the right to think them and I demand the right to tell the truth as I see they are.

Violence is one of the most fun things to watch.

When you think about it, we actors are kind of prostitutes. We get paid to feign attraction and love.

Most of all, I want to thank my father, up there, the man who when I said I wanted to be an actor, he said, ‘Wonderful. Just have a back-up profession like welding.’

I’m not Blockbuster Boy.

Dreaming about being an actress is more exciting than being one.

My tramp is made up of mimicry.

But I always feel that whatever I do, I could do better. I suppose it is perfectionism.

I think in many ways Johnny English is a more believable character.

I don’t really like dressing up. Some people probably think actresses dress up everywhere they go. I’m in sweatpants half the time with my hair in a ponytail.