I would love to have been a documentary filmmaker; I just didn't have the resources to do that.
I was imagining films in my head and trying to gather friends together to make movies since I was a kid. I tried to do comedy skits and a horror film.
All I want is the same opportunities as the filmmakers I grew up admiring. But you know, I've had lots of amazing opportunities to do the movies I wanted to do. If I could write my future, I'd want to keep making character-based films that can make use of my voice as a filmmaker.
When I was young, I loved movies so much I wanted to make one.
I always felt restrained by lower-budget films. I enjoyed making them, and I felt fulfilled, but I really did always want to make bigger movies.
I'm a bit of a geek, actually. So I always wanted my first film to be science fiction.
The real kudos need to go to my family, who have supported my crazy filmmaking dreams - from Melbourne, to L.A., England and the wider world - by supporting my projects and passions over the past years.
I got into film school thinking I was going to make features, like every other film geek.
Starting in Greece, you couldn't really say, 'I'm going to become a film-maker.' A 15-year-old boy in Greece in the '80s and '90s? There was nothing like that happening.
I wanted to be a part of commercial cinema.
I mean, being shot in slow motion doing cocaine by Martin Scorsese is, like, maybe every actor's dream. Nothing will compare to it. Except maybe having kids.
I went to film school at Columbia and did that for a couple years, and really thought I was going to be a filmmaker, and then I kind of drifted over to the acting side after that.
Cannes is the oldest film festival in the world, and I've long dreamed of having one of my films there in competition. It's a dream that lay dormant for a long time; I stopped believing in it.
The reality is, the movies that were most impactful to me growing up, when I decided I wanted to make movies, I was going to see Woody Allen double features with my brother, back when they had double features.
If you're a filmmaker who grew up wanting to make a movie for people to have that female experience of sitting in the theater together, it's hard to do unless you can compete with the bigger spectacles that are being offered to them.
Adaptations are fun for me because they connect to the idea of filmmaking I had when I was a kid. I would see a movie and think: 'I'm gonna make that movie.'
I'm sort of a delusional in the sense of, I was just gonna graduate from school and just, like, prance onto a film set and have a movie crew waiting for me to make my '8½' or something, which is completely insane.
I wanted to make films since I was young. My background had nothing to do with anything creative, so it seemed an impossible task.
We've always wanted to be filmmakers.
I remember when I saw 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,' I wanted to go out and direct a movie right there on the streets of Manhattan. Unfortunately, you can't without permits.
I was passionate about films, but was scared to tell that to my parents. Soon after my engineering, I got a job and was earning well. But I wanted to chase my dreams and get into movies.
One of the most telling things about film school is you've got a lot of students wandering around saying, "Oh, I wish I could make a movie. I wish I could make a movie."
