Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.
Love and respect are the most important aspects of parenting, and of all relationships.
Let how you live your life stand for something, no matter how small and incidental it may seem.
The definition of a friend is somebody who adores you even though they know the things you are most ashamed of.
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 don't know if I see myself as really an action hero, but I like doing physical movies and I like doing movies where the writing is very lean.
I think Anna and the King is a look at Asia from the Asian perspective, reflecting the Asian experience, which is very rare.
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 was one of those avid moviegoers as a kid, and we didn't have video, so we went to see everything five times. I went to see every foreign film playing in my town. As times went on, I watched a lot less films. I have a different film school now. My film school now is my life experience.
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.
Adolescence is a tough one to be a child actor.
I'd always need a creative outlet. But sometimes, I do fantasize what my life would be like if I weren't famous.
I'd like to be Dakota Fanning when I get young.
I like to be in a different place when I make a movie so that I can't really focus on anything else, and that is your world.
I wish that I spoke more languages. I speak a couple languages, but not well enough to really dub myself. French is really the only one, and it's a difficult thing.
I do almost all my movies in French. I dub them.
My earliest memories are doing commercials and TV.
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.
As an actor, I'm always playing solitary characters. But as a director, I'm always making ensemble movies, which focus on lots of people's lives and how they intertwine.
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.
