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.

The better the actor, the less you know about his life. I mean, nobody's better than De Niro and you don't know anything about him, right?

Eventually stardom is going to go away from me. It goes away from everybody and all you have in the end is to be able to look back and like the choices you made.

Being known as a writer did change the relationships I had with directors. The rap on actors is that they always want to inflate their parts. But when directors know you write screenplays and have a different view of things, you really get invited into the huddle in a much fuller way. And those collaborations end in friendships.

It's usually the exact same three things which are, the Scripts, the Director and the Role those are the three things I look for and really any two of them, If I get two of them that's usually enough, but definitely those are the things I look for.

I think Clint Eastwood is a well oiled machine. Everyone that works with him has the same reaction, "Can I stay with you?"

We're here for such a short time. When your great-great-grandkids study history, don't you want them to be proud that you were part of the solution?