I ask a million questions, and I insist on having answers. I think that is what we have to do. I have to know what the director wants. Some are very much in their head, and I need to force it out of them. I just can't play around for eight hours and see if something happens.

Machiavelli had some cold tricks for people who wanted to be demagogues and wanted to take over the world.

Everybody wants a big crowd. You get amazed sometimes with certain things that millions of people are watching and you go, "Serious?! Really?!" And then, there are things that you really, really enjoy and not a lot of people are watching. It's very, very hard to predict how it works.

I'm in a very lucky position. You have to remember that 95 percent of all actors aren't working. I'm actually able to go to France and work. It's a situation I couldn't have dreamt up.

If you're not bruised up, then you're not doing an action film in a real way.

If you spend a week at a casino you will very easily see that people have a certain way of behaving in a casino.

The criteria [to take or refuse the role] is that I would love to have some kind of dialogue or communication with the director. I need to understand that we can communicate and that we like communication. That's something I have to have a strong feeling about. Secondly, I have to find the script intriguing or interesting. I don't have to understand the whole script, but I do have to find it intriguing. If those two things are present, that would probably be a yes.