“The most important thing in life will always be family. The people right here, right now.”

My mother gave me this book called Feature Films at Used Car Prices by a guy named Rick Schmidt. I gotta credit the guy, cuz he gave me the most practical advice. It empowers you.

You live these three months in this reality, in this dark reality, you don’t want to do those films every year because they’re taxing. I started smoking a lot of cigarettes.

You break her heart, I’ll break your neck.

Find your confidence, lead with love, the rest will follow.

You make movies for the people. If critics happen to like them too, well, that’s a home run.

I’m a perfectionist. I’m very critical, especially artistically.

I believe in paying special attention to every project that you do and supporting the projects you do.

The thing that stood out above and beyond all the experiences was this relationship with the nine-month-old baby. On weekends, I’d be thinking about going back to set on Monday just to see the baby.

I’ve been auditioning since I was 7 years old.

It’s like you have a child and you think, ‘Everything that I’ve done up until this point is insignificant in comparison to being a father.’ It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Filmmaking is such a collaborative piece of art that you can’t look to one person – you couldn’t look to me, you couldn’t say, ‘Because Vin’s in it, it’s this or that.’ It’s really all of us coming together for that period of time to try and make magic.

You get a timeless cool card in New York.

Of course, I don’t act in an extreme fashion in my day to day life. I don’t think any of us live do. I think we all have that reserve somewhere and we pull upon it when we need it.

I grew up with all kinds of people.

It’s really bizarre because no one knows this, but elephants have killed more animal trainers than any other animal.

I was the oldest of the children in my family. I had to do a lot of diaper-changing and lunch-making. I was taking my little sister to ballet, picking up my brother, sort of being a super-nanny.