When I felt like an outsider, movies made me feel inside my own skill set.
People often tell me how much they love the digital skies that we obviously painted for 'War Horse.' Well, there's not a single sky that we put in through special effects. The skies you see in the movie are the skies that we experienced - but it was definitely challenging at times.
I interviewed survivors, I went to Poland, saw the cities and spent time with the people and spoke to the Jews who had come back to Poland after the war and talked about why they had come back.
Lincoln's leadership is based on a number of precepts, but my favorite one is that he acted in the name, and for the good, of the people.
There are so many rumours about so many of us in the public eye. Sometimes it's too hard to deny what is not true.
And I may often question choices I make as a producer. But I've never questioned the choices I make as a director.
I've always been interested in how we survive and how resourceful we are as Americans.
I'm always in favor of Israel responding strongly when it's threatened. At the same time, a response to a response doesn't really solve anything. It just creates a perpetual-motion machine.
I'm always in favor of Israel responding strongly when it's threatened.
I didn't read reviews earlier in my career, but I read them now as I'm older. I read them all.
I don't really have a schedule of when I want to show my children my movies.
There's nothing self-serving about what motivated me to bring 'Schindler's List' to the screen.
I made 'Empire of the Sun' in Shanghai in the 1980s and want to come back one day to make a movie in China.
I simply adore 'The Simpsons.' I go to bed in a 'Simpsons' T-shirt.
Making a movie and not directing the little moments is like drinking a soda and leaving the little slurp puddle for someone else.
I'm not in a race with anybody to make the biggest hit movie anymore. I am just trying to tell stories that I can stay interested in for the two years it takes me to supervise the writing and to direct them.
So I try to re-invent my own eye every time I tackle a new subject. But it's hard, because everybody has style. You can't help it.
I get that same queasy, nervous, thrilling feeling every time I go to work. That's never worn off since I was 12 years-old with my dad's 8-millimeter movie camera.
My dad took me to my first movie. It was 'The Greatest Show on Earth' in 1952, a movie of such scale it was actually a traumatic experience.
My father had many, many veterans over to the house, and the older I got the more I appreciated their sacrifice.
