I'm very wary about giving advice. I think it's very dangerous to give advice to people, except if you know them very well.

There are lots of wonderful old Italian actors. You don't need to take an Egyptian to play an Italian actor.

This character in the film, these things that he says which sound like advice and wise things, they are very common for Orientals. It's all the tradition.

I can't say I gave up totally my passion for women but almost.

He read his mind. He's a strange sort of man, isn't he? It's not just the advice and the wisdom that he has.

This is one of the factors that also made me very much want to make this film, apart from the fact that I loved it. If the boy hadn't been Jewish and the man hadn't been Muslim, it wouldn't have made any difference to the film. I don't think it's relevant, really.

To learn bad dialogue is so difficult and so boring, and to work with a stupid director who tells you to do the wrong thing, etcetera, it's just unbearable.