He has a very strong vision of what he wants.

It's a miracle when something actually turns out well because there are so many ways for it to go wrong.

Happiness is the true beauty weapon.

I remember Anthony Perkins saying, "Real is not necessarily interesting." So real is not enough. But what happens as an actor is that you're really trained to listen and to be open and have empathy. It's such a natural consequence that you end up being more political. You can empathize with the mother whose kids are going to be sent to Iraq, or you can emphasize with the mother who is losing their child to a disease. How could you not then be active? So you're automatically drawn to that aspect in the rest of your life.

If Wes Anderson has a very strong cast, he can direct the minutia of that story and still manage to have something that lives and breathes.

I'm a native New Yorker. Everything to do with New York feels like my family.

We were friends with Jonathan Demme. We were all down on the West Side of New York, and I think I met Kurt Vonnegut through Edith Demme. And then I was lucky to do Who Am I This Time? 1982, which was an adaptation of his short story that Jonathan Demme directed with Chris Walken and I, and that really cemented the friendship.