Boys are easy. I mean, there are just a lot of bruises when they're young. With boys, you get a lot of accidental jabs in the eye and stepping on your feet, and those tantrums they cause when they don't want to leave the toy store.

I think anybody over 30 plays parents because it happens in your thirties and so that's kind of a natural progression. But I'm definitely drawn to it. It's probably the most intense, passionate thing that happens to you as you get older.

Well, I certainly was exposed to and learned to appreciate the work of great directors early on. As a kid, my mother used to take me to see really interesting arty films in Los Angeles.

I had to take my makeup off at work every night. I wasn't allowed to do it at home because my mom said that when your work day is done, you're done with work.

But the reason I became, why I wanted to be in the business was because there was Midnight Cowboy.

With 'Taxi Driver,' I had this eureka moment. I realized that acting could be much more than what I had been doing. I had to build a character that wasn't me.

I wish people could get over the hang-up of subtitles, although at the same time, you know, that's kind of why I'm kind of pro dubbing.

Knowing what paint a painter uses or having an understanding of where he was in the history of where he came from doesn't hurt your appreciation of the painting.

I don't know why people think child actresses in particular are screwed up. I see kids everywhere who are totally bored. I've never been bored a day in my life.

Any actor working a long time should know how a shot is set up, where to place themselves, how to handle the lines. I'm a member of the crew, like the best boy, the electrician. What I'm good at is making eyes at the camera.

'Taxi Driver' was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I didn't become a weirdo and squawk like a chicken.

I don't have a burning desire to act, strangely enough. I don't know that if I hadn't been an actor as a young person, I don't know that I ever would have chosen this because it's not really my personality.

I love the way L A. leaves you alone. I can go home, read all day, and nobody bugs me.

Every movie that I've had to really knock down the door for has been an enormous success for me. Not just like a financial success but a real personal success.

Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock do romantic comedies. I do dark dramas. I do these movies well.

In a weird way, that's the beauty of being an actor. You get to live out things that you're afraid of, and you get to say, 'Well, maybe I can get to the end of it and survive it intact and I can be the hero of my own story.' It's kind of a way of exorcising fear.

My mom was always late. It drove me crazy as a child. So I'm always on time - or early.

People are always surprised when I say that I'm an atheist.

You develop a third eye where you kind of know where they are in a room at all times but no matter how vigilant you are as a parent, at some point, you'll look around a room and can't find them and there's a searing pain that goes through your body.

But now I really don't want to work unless I really, really care about a project.

By the first week of shooting, you know exactly where your film is heading based on the psychology of your director.

I am the luckiest filmmaker I know.

I fantasize about having a manual job where I can come home at night, read a book and not feel responsible for what will happen the next day.

I have, in some ways, saved characters that have been marginalized by society by playing them - and having them still have dignity and still survive, still get through it.

I love European movies and I kind of grew up on European films.

I love more than anything looking at a movie scene by scene and seeing the intention behind it.

I spent a lot of time not in school, so I didn't have deep relationships with kids my own age.

I think Anna and the King is a look at Asia from the Asian perspective, reflecting the Asian experience, which is very rare.

I'm kind of a chatterbox and I talk really fast.

My kids are young and my life with them is really stimulating and really full and significant.

The movies I made when I was 14 or 15, I have a hard time looking at those. Those were the awkward years. I don't know if anybody can look at something they did when they were 14 and not wince.

I'd like to be Dakota Fanning when I get young.

I'm interested in directing movies about situations that I've lived, so they are almost a personal essay about what I've come to believe in.

Acting, for me, is exhausting. I'm always more energized by directing. It's more intense to direct. I can pop in and express myself, then pop out again. It's a huge passion for me.

It's very hard for me to get a new car. It's really hard for me to get a new house. It's really hard for me to move on from the things that give me stability.

I'm a technician. I don't go for the get-into-the-role stuff. I read the lines and play the scenes.

I read more than I do anything else, probably. I read about three books a week.

I'd always need a creative outlet. But sometimes, I do fantasize what my life would be like if I weren't famous.

Every movie changes you. The process of making a film changes you.

I don't direct so that I can have an identity and so I can go on to CGI movies. I had a big identity as an actor, and that's not what I'm looking for from directing. Directing is a whole different goal.

I don't find acting and directing schizophrenic in any way. I find it completely easy to move between the two.

It's hard to get personal films off the ground, and it's hard developing them.

I don't make movies because I love to act. I make movies because I like to make movies, and I like to be a part of that process.

As I've said before, and I still hold to, I truly am the most boring person alive. And if there was a great investigation to be found at the end of the resume, it would be, the most boring person alive.

I do almost all my movies in French. I dub them.

I saw leaving college as an opportunity to do something different with my life. I always thought that becoming an academic was going to be my path.

I make dark dramas, movies about people living in desperate fear who then overcome that fear and find a heroic side to themselves.

As an actor, I'm attracted to drama; as a director, it's humor - because it's the story of my life, and I can't be that serious about it. Being alone is a big theme in all my movies, both as a director and as an actress.

'Silence Of The Lambs' was not something people expected me to do.

I was never the ingenue or the pretty girlfriend of Tom Cruise in a movie. I didn't have that career, so I don't have to compete on that level.