Any good director creates a playground. That's what they do. They hire the right actor, open the door and let them play because stuff will happen, right then and there. The audience wants to believe that what's going on is happening for the first time, ever. That's what acting is. That's what good scene writing is.
I don't make plans for my future. I have learned that you cannot predict what will happen.
I like rock music because it's always sonically fascinating. There's never a method to what it needs to sound like. It's just however that instrument comes out that day, whatever the humidity level was in the air, what studio you were at. All that makes that tone that you can't re-create, so each song is like a person.
I never start out with any kind of connecting theme or plan. Everything just falls the way it falls. I don't ever think about what kind of fiction I write or what I am writing about or what I am trying to write about. When I'm writing, what I do is I think about a story that I want to tell.
We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold.
When you make feature films, you have a script, which is a bible. The final result should be as it was written down on paper. And in documentary, you can write whatever you want, but life brings you situations where you have to be fast thinking, fast moving.
You cannot plan what is going to happen. You cannot plan your life.
I was the same kind of father as I was a harpist - I played by ear.
Other than conversation, no other art form can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction like Jazz.
When I sit down to write a scene, I have a plan in mind, and I'm thrilled when a character disregards my goals and takes the story to a place I hadn't imagined.
In a way, I don't create anything; I just open myself to the character, and the character takes over. Of course, I'm aware of it, and I'm driving it, but I don't try to control it. If I try to control it, it goes wrong.
When I attack a role, be it TV, film or stage, the first thing I say is, I don't want to know anything. If it's good I don't want to hear it; if it's bad I don't want to hear it. The only thing either thing can do is distract me. I like to stay focused.
I love it when the director says, 'Rebel, just do whatever you want.' I'm, like, 'Yes!'
First of all, to do performance art, you really have to give 100 percent. I only know that I have to give 100 percent and then what happens, happens.
I'm a situationist when it comes to anything creative, and that stands with the visual part of anything I do as well. I deal with the concrete things I have in front of me, and I think that's a wise way to be.
Losing yourself in the character opens you up in a way that no amount of precise preparation can.
A so-called happy marriage corresponds to love as a correct poem to an improvised song.
I think it just helps to be very aware that fundamentally, there are no adults. Everyone is making it up as they go along. You have to find your own path, picking, choosing, taking and discarding as you see fit.
With film sometimes you're thrown in there and you literally hit the ground running, taking your best shot and just leave it up to the editing.
Sometimes, I knew generally what I was going to do, but I've never written anything down. Call it a sixth sense: the lines just come.
I don't think it's something you can be prepared for. I'm just going with the flow.
I don't like to have everything all worked out in my head because there's always a chance of it coming out different than you think it should anyway.
As an actor I suppose you're constantly observing. I don't sit in restaurants making notes, I don't live my life in order to then feed it into my work.
I haven't planned a reaction on anything... If you do, you've screwed up.
I was an actor for a little bit. That's when I started to understand fiction - and that one of the great things about fiction is that you're dependent on the characters as much as they're dependent on you.
