I had success as an actor relatively early. When I was 22, I got nominated for an Academy Award for The Last Picture Show, so that road, you know, had the least resistance. I was doing my music all that time, but it's pretty hard to turn down these great movie offers. And my father counseled me; he said, "You know, one of the wonderful things about acting is that you can incorporate all of your interests into the different parts you play." I'm glad I listened to the old man, because that's the way it turned out.

I've never been motivated by the award thing. There's a certain thing that this fame thing does that makes my job harder, in a way. I'm still working with that. I don't think about it too much until somebody asks me a question, and then I think about it.

Well, there are all kinds of gutters. Life will supply you with gutters.

Directing takes a lot of time.

I'm very manipulative towards directors. My theory is that everyone on the set is directing the film, we're all receiving art messages from the universe on how we should do the film.

You liked the freshness of it, c'mon try it" and I said "oh God, I read it three of four times" and finally I said "all right, I want you guys to organize a reading and I want you to be there to see how terrible this is not going to work at all", so we had a table like this, and read the script, and it was just great.

My mom wasn't a movie star.