One wants to be able to experience being other people, remaking a reality, remaking a life, remaking a certain world.

I have one life. I am a certain age. I'm married to one person. I have a certain number of children. I won't have another life other than that, but I do have many lives through the films.

If we were a primitive society, movie stars would be gods.

I think it's a terrible shame that politics has become show business.

I make films, and I hope that people come to see them. If they don't, I pay a big price. But I can't make decisions where I would change my own standards or my own taste in order to court the public in some way.

I'm trying to be morally responsible and no more. I don't have an agenda I'm trying to push. People talk about Three Days of the Condor as being anti-government but the last statement in that movie is the CIA guy saying to Robert Redford, "Ask 'em when they're running out. Ask 'em when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask 'em when their engines stop. Ask 'em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You want to know something? They won't want us to ask 'em. They'll just want us to get it for 'em!"

We talked about Tootsie, the idea in Tootsie is that a man becomes a better man for having been a woman.