When you hire great actors, you're lucky, so you just try to create an atmosphere where they can succeed and relax and take risks. You're happy that you get to watch them at the monitor and that your name is on the director's chair.

My movies are unadorned, they're not particularly fancy, I think they're kind of workmanlike in some ways, focusing on the writing and the acting.

Sometimes I get insecure about being a real director because I look at the great directors, and they have such command. But maybe that keeps me critical of myself. Maybe it keeps me moving forward.

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 feel things more deeply... anything to do with kids. It just makes a big difference in my life... Having a child is like taking the deepest core vulnerable aspect of myself, reaching in and taking it outside of my body.

The one benefit of having done all kinds of movies as an actor is, you learn the pros and cons of being tempted to do a really big movie because it costs a lot of money.

How about the more than 1 billion Muslim people in the U.S, who aren't fanatical, who don't punch women, who just want to go to school, have some sandwiches, and pray five times a day?