I've always had this idea that I wanted movies to make people better not worse.

With 'Taxi Driver,' I had this eureka moment. I realized that acting could be much more than what I had been doing. I had to build a character that wasn't me.

If you had been a public figure from the time you were a toddler, if you'd had to fight for a life that felt real and honest and normal against all odds, than maybe to you might value privacy above all else. I have given everything up there from the time that I was three-years old. That's reality show enough, don't you think?

I don't find acting and directing schizophrenic, in any way. I find it completely easy to move between the two.

Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.

In a weird way, that's the beauty of being an actor. You get to live out things that you're afraid of, and you get to say, 'Well, maybe I can get to the end of it and survive it intact and I can be the hero of my own story.' It's kind of a way of exorcising fear.

Being understood is not the most essential thing in life.