A mathematician either has a feeling for equations and an understanding and delight in it, not only in the purity of it, but in its beauty as well. I don't think that's something that you learn at school. I think you can get better in mathematics on a school level, but when you're talking about being a mathematician, I think that's definitely a gift of genes or whatever, you know? Whatever your pool is.

I think it would be very difficult to play somebody if they didn't think they had any virtues or redeeming characteristics.

The image onscreen takes you forward, it's the driving force of the piece and it's also the information that you're given.

Once you've started to dig a hole, you can't get out of it.

Film has changed vastly in the time that I've been an actor, and it's, I think, very much for the better. I think there are just magnificent films now, and they're blossoming in the way that the novel did years ago.

Bong Joon-ho is enormously sensitive to performance. He knows what he needs to see and that's all he needs to shoot. He is so daring. We don't do that in the west. We shoot everything.

I never had any ambition to be a star, or whatever it is called, and I'm still embarrassed at the word.