In the States it's more and more difficult to get an independent film off the ground, and you certainly wont get the opportunity to play something like that in a studio movie.

From John Huston to Fred Zinnemann and Richard Fleischer and all those great American directors.

I'd say the film to avoid is a director's second film, particularly if his first film was a big success. The second film is where you've really needed to have learned something.

People say you never retire in this [film] business and I say, well, not until they retire you.

I do what interests me when I'm invited and do it as well as I know how and try to get better. That's all.

I put everything I can into the mulberry of my mind and hope that it is going to ferment and make a decent wine. How that process happens, I'm sorry to tell you I can't describe.

My springboard is always the script. Even if the script is taken from a novel, I often haven't read the novel...