It's important not to base your ambition on anybody else's history, but to figure out how best to use your own particular personality and understanding of yourself to help tell other people's stories.

Directing is too hard, it takes too much time, and it doesn't pay very well.

An actor only has his own understanding and experience to work with.

I wanted to be a forest ranger or a coal man. At a very early age, I knew I didn't want to do what my dad did, which was work in an office.

What I found was an emotional consistency with him. The words, the scenes, the situations - I wasn't mimicking what I thought Branch Rickey's emotional reality would have been.

I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, so nothing of what I was studying seemed to fit. I know now that I should have taken advantage of that time and that I missed a great deal of the opportunity to educate myself.

I was desperately unhappy with it [Blade Runner]. I was compelled by contract to record five or six different versions of the narration, each of which was found wanting on a storytelling basis. The final version was something that I was completely unhappy with. The movie obviously has a very strong following, but it could have been more than a cult picture.