I can't imagine any one more delightful to sit and talk with about movies on a regular basis.

I always knew I was going to be successful in some way with films. I don't know why. I had no particular talent, but I always knew I was going to be sitting in a dining room with Lucille Ball and at a cocktail party with Bette Davis.

For a lot of filmmakers, their first goal is to be successful and make some money. But once people start doing that, the real goal is then to win an Academy Award. Because when they do, they know that their obit is going to start out, "Academy Award winner so-and-so."

The closest to Hepburn is Cate Blanchett.

My favorite decade of cinema would be kind of the '40s, yeah. I like things in the '30s, but you know, the sound recording in the '30s wasn't very good. But for some reason the movies in the '40s have the best personalities: Jimmy Stewart, Gary Cooper, Betty Grable, Gene Tierney, and all those people. For some reason, I seem to gravitate more toward the '40s, and I don't necessarily know why. I just love the people.

I think that no matter whether you're Quentin Tarantino or any other kind of a rebel, or whatever, everyone who makes movies still wants to win an Academy Award, because it's like the Pulitzer Prize or the Congressional Medal Of Honor. It's the best endorsement you could get as a moviemaker.

I think one thing that always attracted me to movies was the personalities. I went to movies not because the stories necessarily appealed to me, but because of the people in them.