It's just like with people. You're going to get along better working with them - human or equine - if you ask politely rather than demand that they do things.

I think that every person has many, many people inside of them. We change our personality depending on who we are talking to or what situation we are in.

My job as an artist, as I see it, is to understand and in some cases to take on various ways of thinking about people and the world that are different from my own, sometimes radically different.

When I have a day off, I won't spend it at a Hollywood party. I'd rather be at home with paints and a blank canvas.

I don't think special attention should be given to an actor or a singer or a baseball player or a soccer player more than anyone else, but they do have an opinion like anyone else.

Walking down the street in any town or city in the world and having people look at you and start talking to you, convinced that they know you as well or better than they do members of their own family, that's just an odd phenomenon. But I mean, I wouldn't say it was a bad thing. It's an interesting thing.

I wrote a letter to the magazine [Time magazine] pointing out that [Richard] Corliss's comparison of Christopher Lee's Saruman to Osama Bin Laden, and the vastly outnumbered defenders of Helm's Deep united against the Orcs to the "Coalition of the Willing" fighting the good fight against Muslim hordes, displayed the simplistic, xenophobic, and arrogant worldview that makes the government of the United States feared and mistrusted around the world. The editors claimed they had no space to print my brief letter, which I felt was dishonest and cowardly.