They do the same thing [with cigarette] that they do in the kind of action picture where you know 200 people are killed and then there's no pain.

I always wanted to be a rock'n'roll star.

That's sort of what I felt... I miss drinking, I thought bars were truly holy places.

I was six when we came to this country. When I was 14 or so, I still had a lot of trouble with it.

I'm not suggesting at all that we take away all of the characters' vices. I am suggesting that this particular vice is so insidious, so nefarious, and so deadly that simply by glamorizing it or poisoning our young adults, and I think it's a very separate category, but in no way am I suggesting that we move on from banning smoking in movies to banning drinking, you know, or whatever else we want to do.

I have always been fascinated by the corruption of power.

I think to put death on screen where it isn't that turns it into comic book time and there I think by desensitizing an audience, you really do open the possibility that someone is going to kill.