My father was and is a great journalist. Thirty years ago, I was studying broadcasting in college, and the problem was I wasn't nearly as good as my father. I wasn't as quick or as smart as my old man, and I realized it would be a long time before I was ever going to be, and I decided to do something else.

It's not that I lead this oblivious life where I think I've got such a great personality that people want to spend time with me. If someone has a poster of you or asks for your autograph, clearly you can't take them out on a date. It's not that interesting if someone is just interested in you.

It is rather astonishing that the United States does not play ball with the ICC, considering our country was the beacon of the idea of an international criminal court.

When you see Hitler burning paintings by Salvador Dali and Picasso he's telling you that this time period and these men and this culture didn't exist, and I've seen that happen in other countries, Sudan for instance, it's not enough to kill them you have to destroy all of their markings that they left that was their history.

If we dig deep in our history and remember that we are not descendants from fearful people, we proclaim ourselves indeed as we are the defenders of freedom wherever it continues to exist in the world.

When you go to Detroit you see a town that is resilient, that's just fighting to win again, and there's an energy to that. Just watching a city really fighting to get back on its feet and watching the inner strength of a city is tremendous.

Acting is one element in a film. Directing is sort of the painter using all of those elements - sound and music and camera and putting it all together. And that can be fun and exciting. If you fail, it's incredibly upsetting - much more upsetting than when you're an actor. But when you succeed it's incredibly, incredibly exciting, so I like the risk of it all.