I didn't think about politics until I came to Europe.

Right now I am working on something that's pretty important to me. It has to do with my own history in politics. I'd done All the President's Men, and the history of how that came about is a story unto itself. It began with The Candidate. No one knows about that connection. I was on a train, and I was promoting The Candidate going from Jacksonville, Florida, down to Miami to duplicate what candidates in 1972 did.

It's good to say, 'Look, I can't always be right, but my gut tells me this' - and then you confirm with your gut.

I have the freedom to take chances, to say no. I have the freedom to be who I really want to be, rather than have to conform to this or that just to stay alive.

I think independent filmmakers, documentary filmmakers - they are journalists.

When I started, I was an artist; I wanted to be an artist. I became an actor almost by accident. I acted for fifteen years and tried to produce. I looked for stories that were the story beneath the story that you thought you knew, like 'The Candidate'.

I don't see myself as beautiful. I was a kid who was freckle-faced, and they used to call me 'hay head.'