What is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?

Hollywood was not a place I dreamed of getting to. I never could take seriously the obsession people have about being a celebrity or getting to Hollywood - I was born next door.

So what if my face is falling apart? I don't give a damn. Anyway, it gives me character. Everyone thinks that they can stay pretty forever but some come out of Beverly Hills surgeries looking scary to me.

The technology available for film-making now is incredible, but I am a big believer that it's all in the story.

I was raised in California during the Second World War and into the '50s and everything was fine, everything was great. The sun always shone, everybody looked healthy and wore ties and smoked in restaurants, and there were cars for everybody - except us, because I came from a lower class neighbourhood. But [in France] I realised there was a different point of view, so when I came back to America a year and a half later I was much more focused on my own country culturally and politically.

Essentially, my kids grew up with the emphasis on the environment because I became a political activist in about 1969 and it was not an easy time. Those were the days when the oil and gas companies pretty much controlled the show and anybody speaking about solar energy or carbon energy would get smashed down as being a radical or a tree-hugger or what have you. So I was out there feeling very often alone and my kids would get that.

...if our humanity - our soul as a society - is overtaken by the materiel and cosmetic, there will be no hope of peace.