There are people who appear in the magazines and I don't know who they are. I've never seen anything they've done and their careers are over already. They're famous for maybe 10 minutes. Real careers, I think, take a long time to unfold.

The thing that I like about Germany is that Germans are so much like us. It's not like going to some other countries, where the differences are overwhelming and you walk around in a fog. Germans are so similar to Americans.

We live in a world, it's very hard for Americans to understand that every 20 seconds a kid dies, a kid under the age of five, right, dies somewhere on the Earth because of lack of access to clean water and sanitation. Every 20 seconds that happens on our planet. It's just very hard for us to relate to.

As somebody who makes his living in the movie business and wants to contribute to it, I think that the best chance I have of doing that is just consistently working with great directors.

If your movies don't perform, they just stop calling you.

Now that I have kids, I'm probably more overprotective than I've ever been. My wife's nickname for me is "red alert." I sometimes check just to see if the kids are breathing. But I try not to be a helicopter parent.

If you are writing a story and trying to draw an audience to come and hear you tell it, it's got to in some way relate to them. Who wants to come and hear about your specific problems? It's not therapy - it's supposed to be a communal piece of entertainment.