So yeah, a good director will be able to listen and hear everything, but have a confident vision of his own that he can say, 'oh yeah - that's a great point.' And you never know; often you can help far more than you think you can, because there's so much more that he's juggling than an actor.

People always say, "What do you want to do next, what kind of movie do you want to do next?" And I say, "I wanna do whatever script that is the best one that comes my way." I certainly would never say, "Oh, I'm gonna do a Western next," and sit around waitin' for a Western to come along when there's some other genre's brilliant script sitting right there.

And I not only inherited an aversion to the nine-to-five routine, but the sense from my parents that being bored and boring is the worst thing that you can be.

I've had some painful experiences in my life, but I feel like I'm trivializing them by using them for a scene in a movie. I don't want to do that. It just makes me feel kind of dirty for having done that.

'Batman' took 10 months to film, and by the time I stopped working on it, it took a long time before my English accent came out again. I was actually having to try for it.

When it comes to films, people often don't differentiate between the message of a bad central character and the message of the film itself. They are two separate things.

The art of survival is a story that never ends.