In Hollywood, I think I get a bad rap for being a perfectionist. It’s something that’s not always welcomed in Hollywood, because you’re always pushing people and you’re pushing yourself to be the best that you can be.
Any film that you see is never just the director. If it’s a film that you love, it’s not so easy to say, “Oh it’s directed by this person – that means everything that person directs is going be wonderful.”
I am flattered that they think that many people would enjoy my work. I don’t approach any genre a different way than I may approach another one. I treat every role I do like a role worthy of applying whatever kind of tactic, process and talent I have.
When you go to the movies with your whole family, it’s a different experience. For some reason, it’s something that you’re all doing together and you take away something special in that.
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.
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.
It would be flattering to call it a modern Dirty Harry, but I think this film deals more with the loss of his wife than the traditional revenge vigilante films.
I enjoy playing a quintessential antihero. There’s something therapeutic about playing such characters. I know it sounds corny but I feel like I learn about myself when I play that characters.
I’m a fantasy guy. So I brought the fantasy element to the Riddick, David Twohy brought the sci-fi, and it came together.You see that in every aspect of the film.
I grew up in an artists community in New York, in a building that was government-subsidised for artists. No one made any money, but they made art for the sake of art.
