I don't have a burning desire to act strangely enough. I don't know that if I hadn't been an actor as a young person, I don't know that I ever would have chosen this because it's not really my personality.

My mom was always late. It drove me crazy as a child. So I'm always on time - or early.

Interestingly, when you do films, sometimes you have conscious reasons, things that you were looking for, or stuff that you were trying to do. And then, you see the film and you think, "Wow, it ended up being something totally different!"

I was never the ingenue or the pretty girlfriend of Tom Cruise in a movie. I didn't have that career, so I don't have to compete on that level.

I'd prefer not to act in the film I'm directing. I think, though, as an actor, you do learn how to turn things on and off quickly and kind of compartmentalize. You learn to accommodate the camera and the other actors, to notice where the boom is and where you mark is, and be able to repeat something a few times.

I look back at my career when I was younger and can connect what I was going through at the time with the characters I was playing. I see the similarities in them reflecting on my life.

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.