The first movie I saw - and I don't know if it influenced me - was 'Ben Hur'.

Sometimes poetry, it is incomprehensible. But we need incomprehensible stuff! It is very healthy to talk about incomprehensible things! It is very healthy! We need it!

To be in front of an audience and pretending, and to lie, this is the principle of acting.

My mother and my father went to the cinema for the first time when I made my first movie in 1978.

Fellini and Bunuel changed my life for me, they are my favourites. If it is true that movies are dreams, both of them, Fellini and Bunuel were shooting in a dream way.

Maybe sometimes I have been wrong with some movies. Anyway, I try to do my best.

I could have made a small film and kept all the money from 'Life is Beautiful'. Instead, I spent more money than I had on 'Pinocchio', a very risky film.