I'm interested in making films that ask questions and don't particularly provide answers.

I've been left for someone...all those things...It was sometimes a surprise, and sometimes you saw t coming. The most painful was when I kept trying to get someone back. But we all make dumb mistakes.

What did Bush do on 9/11? He ran away and hid. Even Reagan knew more about leadership than that, and he was as bad a symbol of America as I can think of, off-hand. But at least he's been in enough cowboy movies to know he had to come out and stand on top of the rubble and be seen shaking his fist or something.

I find that it's a very odd thing to think of competition when you're talking about what I still think of as art. I don't think of competing with actors or filmmakers at all. You do compete, in a way, at the box office, but we're far enough apart when both films are coming out that I'm not concerned with that either.

I think people in Italy live their lives better than we do. It's an older country, and they've learned to celebrate dinner and lunch, whereas we sort of eat as quickly as we can to get through it.

When you start out as an actor, you read a script thinking of it at its best. But that's not usually the case in general, and usually what you have to do is you have to read a script and think of it at its worst. You read it going, "OK, how bad could this be?" first and foremost. You cannot make a good film out of a bad script. You can make a bad film out of a good script, but you can't make a good film out of a bad script.

What you learn after you are 40 is that it is just about plugging up holes in the boat. You just hope you have enough corks to plug enough of the holes.