The best characters are the ones that somehow manage to be both attractive and repulsive at the same time. If you do that, you're at the center of the universe - if you can find characters who are more ambiguous and can raise more questions than answers.

I don't know if my wife left me because of my drinking or I started drinking 'cause my wife left me.

We do see Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi and Chow Yun Fat, but it's very rare to see the Chinese male actor in Hollywood movies, which is something I take great umbrage with. You know, my son is Asian. He may want to direct one day; he may want to be an actor like his father - and I want that to be open to him.

I do like characters that have flaws, some sort of pathos to them that they are trying to sort out.

Feel like real time unfolding. It's going to smack of reality and feel as real as it can ... The buildings themselves aren't (shown) ... The movie's about what happened amongst this handful of men when the buildings came down.

I don't find the same things funny that many other people seem to find funny. I don't really respond to sex jokes and things like that, and some of my friends look at me and go, "Come on, Nic, that was my best joke. Why aren't you laughing?" I go, "I really don't know why I'm not laughing. I'm sort of out of sync with it." So I'd have to find something that was really about weird human behavior for me to laugh.

Hollywood didn't know if I was an actor or a nut or if I was this crazy character I was playing. I had developed an image of being a little bit unusual, different and wild.