If you want your freedom, you have to be willing to work hard to exercise it.

I don't want to direct a movie as good as Antonioni, or Kubrick, or Polanski, or whoever. I want it to be my own. I think I've got the seed of it and, what's more, that I can make movies that are different and informed by my taste.

I'm the last guy in the world to feel overlooked by the Academy.

Age is the first limitation on roles that I've ever had to encounter, and I hit that awhile ago.

There are major influences on us that people are not aware of. There are big lies that nobody's willing to discuss.

Comedy is more difficult. You can look at scenes when you're doing a drama like, “Maybe it works,” but in comedy, when you're doing it, either it works or it doesn't. You have to keep doing it until it does, and the requirement is more.

If I were an Arab-American, I would insist on being profiled. This is not the time for civil rights. There are larger issues for Americans.