It all starts with the script: it's not worth taking myself away from my family if I don't have something I'm really passionate about.

There are so many rumours about so many of us in the public eye. Sometimes it's too hard to deny what is not true.

Fathering is a major job, but I need both things in my life: my job to be a director, and my kids to direct me.

With all the movies I've made about history, it's not really fun because you're trying to get it right. You've got history telling how it was, and then my imagination is telling me how I wish it had been, but I can't go there, so I have to censor myself. I'm very good about stopping myself from creating history that never occurred, but it's frustrating.

I didn't read reviews earlier in my career, but I read them now as I'm older. I read them all.

There were so many odd, strange things about Abraham Lincoln that I think nobody knew how to pigeonhole him.

Not every movie, in my opinion, should be in 3D. There are a lot of stories I wouldn't shoot in 3D. But, you know, there are movies that are perfect in 3D.