When it comes to action, I'd say Mel Gibson and Will [Smith] were great.

When we shot "Stargate," he [ Jaye Davidson] came up to me at one point and said, "I don't like shooting movies," and I said, "Why?" "Too many people stare at me." I said, "Then you're totally in the wrong business."

The President of the United States has super star status. He's not a normal person, because he's protected like no other person in the world and if this man's life is in danger, the whole world is kind of in peril in a way, because the leader of the free world could fall into the hands of terrorists.

Everybody knows that the industrialized nations are the worst offenders.

I was actually privately in the White House like invited by Clinton to screen 'Independence Day,' so I know how the private residence looks. I didn't snap a picture, but I have a photographic memory and then I could take a guided tour in the West Wing.

I think sport in general affects what people see in movies. I always try to explain to people in Hollywood that we have to make movies more like sport because, in sport, everything can happen and it's so much better than movies in some ways.

It's very, very rare you find something really original and also because a lot of original stuff, most of the time has no chance, because it's so expensive to make something famous or put it in people's head that it's the one to see, it's like awareness has to be almost like at 80% or 90% if you make an expensive summer movie and that's very hard to do with anything an the White House naturally is in itself some sort of a trademark.