What I was really overwhelmed with by Africa was its tremendous natural beauty; I got to go to some pretty amazing places. Every other weekend we got a day or two off and go on a safari or the natural wonders of Africa and if anyone gets the opportunity to go there, it's something you have to do in your lifetime.

Samurai culture did exist really, for hundreds of years and the notion of people trying to create some sort of a moral code, the idea that there existed certain behaviors that could be celebrated and that could be operative in a life.

I don't think it's a prize when actors and directors or writers and actors work together more than once. You have a trust and a shorthand and a lot of times you even reach the point, where in the process, you don't even have to talk.

It seems that almost every time a valuable natural resource is discovered in the world-whether it be diamonds, rubber, gold, oil, whatever-often what results is a tragedy for the country in which they are found. Making matters worse, the resulting riches from these resources rarely benefit the people of the country from which they come.

I've been in plenty of situations where I thought the film would turn out one way or my performance would be looked at one way and it was an entirely different situation.

To make a great movie is such a combination of different things that need to come into play to actually make a memorable film and not have a film to fall by the wayside, to have something live on during the years, and one of those elements is the commitment the actors have to their performance.

To me this movie is about what is valuable. To one person it might be a stone; to someone else, a story in a magazine; to another, it is a child. The juxtaposition of one man obsessed with finding a valuable diamond with another man risking his life to find his son is the beating heart of this film.