When I was 12, I used to be the best friend of the most beautiful girls, but just the best friend. They would always come to me to cry about a guy who broke their heart, and I would just be sitting there thinking, 'I wish I was the guy and not the best friend.'

There's a big debate in the U.S. about immigration reform. We need to reflect on who's feeding this country today, why this community has been ignored.

Julio Cesar Chavez is the most important sporting figure we have ever had.

My dad was a theater designer, and I spent a lot of time hanging around the dressing room listening to whatever the actors were listening to, which is where I heard Pink Floyd for the first time.

I'm always going to be working on my English, and I'm always going to work on my English so that I can do different characters from different nationalities.

When I was growing up in the theater there were all these amazing girls telling me about the guy who broke their heart. And I was always wishing that it was me.

I don't have this feeling like, 'Oh, I want to live in the United States and make movies and become famous just because the money is here.' I like to make movies that tell stories that I care about.

I've got two young children, so holidays are not the same as they used to be. There are now two types: family holidays and holidays you need from that holiday.

I think film is a world of directors. Theater is a world of actors.

I hate fights. I try to talk people out of fighting if I can and if they start I run away.

With many things in life, you're there because there's a cute girl around that you want to go out with, and you end up finding magic. You end up not caring about the girl but wanting to stay there because of what you found. That happened with 'Amarcord' to me.

I grew up watching cinema in my country that wasn't telling stories about us, and we had to find a way to connect, and our references, our role models had nothing to do with us. And I'm so glad that it's changing.

We consumers have to send a message every day of what we want and what we don't.

Most people are living a life they don't like. They go to work where they don't want to work.

I would pretty much like to forget the music that happened to me between the ages of eight and 11, so I'm going to say the first album I bought was the special edition of 'Dark Side of the Moon.'

In a movie, you work three months to tell a story that happens in two hours. In a Mexican soap opera, you work one day to make a story that's an hour and a half. So you can see the difference in the quality of the project.

I wasn't a fan of boxing, I was a fan of Julio Cesar Chavez. All of Mexico stopped to watch his fights. Old, young, left, right and centre.

Becoming a father is the biggest change you go through in life - at least that I've gone through in life.

I think film can change lives. Doing 'Milk' changed mine, for sure. When I see that someone like Harvey Milk changed his life and the lives of many others in just eight years, I feel powerful. I go out of the cinema saying, 'Maybe there's something I can do, too.'

Everywhere you look, especially on TV, someone is promising to make you rich and famous.

I can sing 'Love Me Do,' very well.

You have to accept who you are in order to make someone happy and be happy.

You don't want everyone to know everything about you.

I don't want to do a history lesson. I don't think cinema should be about that. Cinema should be about emotions.

I wish parents at the end would think a little bit about how everything we do affects the lives of our kids and defines who they're going to be.

I was six when I started working in theater. I chose to be an adult before I should be.

My father had to play the role of mother and father.

I always wanted to be a futbol player, but I was never good enough.

Acting is therapy. It keeps you in contact with your feelings.

I always thought of documentaries as films through which you find your voice as a narrator.

It makes no sense that this country has 11 million workers feeding, building this country, making America what it is, and they don't share the same rights of those who are consuming the fruit of their labor.

Since 'Y Tu Mama Tambien,' I started to spend a lot of time in the United States, and my son was born there.

When you make a film, it's because it's important to you, it means something to you.

Before 'Y Tu Mama,' I did 16 movies that only my family got to see because I invited them to the premiere.

In Mexico, you need to be a bulldog to make a movie because everything is set up for you to go back home and get depressed and not do the movie.

In Mexico, we call it 'terco': the guy who goes out every day, and every day they tell him no, and the next day he's there, and the next day he's there. That's the kind of people who make movies in Mexico.

There's a reality that the market is changing, and the stories of the Latino community need to be out because there's a huge audience in need of films that would represent them.

My first son was born in Los Angeles; he's a Mexican-American.

No makeup can substitute for faces that have actually been under the sun.

Film can be a tool for change; it can start a debate.

I started to work when I was really young. For me, friendship is work, and work is friendship. Those who are next to me and that have been there for a long time are those who can work with me, play football with me, and go watch a film with me.

I'm a terrible dancer.

Everyone is different, and so I don't want to repeat anyone else's career. I want to do mine.

I want to see movies where I can relate to the guy.

In film, normally what happens is that not many people work more than once. Normally, it breaks couples. It doesn't make them.

I always wondered why there weren't any films about Cesar Chavez. There are movies about other civil rights leaders in this country, but why not Chavez?

The nice thing about my job is that it allows me to look deeper into issues and then tell stories with that information.

If your neighbor's reality changes, yours will change as well.

Acting is about communicating, reacting, and sharing - and friendship is about all of those things, too.

The beauty of football is that it's about 11, and another five, at least, are sitting outside. You cannot get competitive.