They say your childhood influences your tastes and interests, or your approach if you're an artist. So what you create, whatever you saw, whatever your childhood was like - it influences how you're going to end up.

I ask my assistants if they're retarded all the time. When the camera is on you, of course, actors have the ability to make it real. For me, if I'm not talking, it is a problem. I have so much more respect for actors after being in front of the camera, and I realize that the hardest part is when you're not talking. Listening is harder than just acting. Listening is the hardest part.

Do I have a small movie in me? Yeah, probably, when I'm 60. But I'm not Hal Ashby, I'm not Roman Polanski. I'm true to myself. Whether you like it or not.

I'd want to marry Cate Blanchett, date Kate Bosworth, and spend the weekend with Elisha Cuthbert.

I've worked with a hundred of the biggest artists in the world, from Madonna to Mariah Carey, and he [Michael Jackson] is just beyond. He's at a whole other level, spiritually. He's got the God spot. Everyone has it, everyone has that God spot, but it's just the way he's in tune with it. He has it. It's right there, and when he starts to sing, God has just opened it up for him. That's why he's not comfortable around people and things, because he's just such a unique - he feels blessed just to be himself. "I can't believe I'm Michael Jackson."

Miami Beach - that's where I grew up, in a middle-class Jewish family led by my maternal grandfather. Me, my great-grandmother - a Holocaust survivor, who was my roommate - my grandparents, my mom and her brother all shared a four-bedroom house.

Would it be nice to win a film award one day? Yes. But the critics are going to have to wait till I'm ready. Right now, my gift is making big movies that audiences want to see.