When my mother got home from work she would take me to the movies. It was her way of getting out and she would take me with her. I'd go home and act all the parts. It had a tremendous influence on my becoming an actor.

When I make a film I'm away from home for two to three months. So I want my kids to look at my films one day and say I love his movies I love his choices-because he loved them.

You make movies for the people. If critics happen to like them too well that's a home run.

It's simple: You get a part. You play a part. You play it well. You do your work and you go home. And what is wonderful about movies is that once they're done they belong to the people. Once you make it it's what they see. That's where my head is at.

I was making a lot of 8mm home movies since I was twelve making little dramas and comedies with the neighborhood kids.

Billions of people have seen and been influenced by movies in the short history of this industry.

Robots have a rich and storied history in movies.

Minimalism seems closest to the sophisticated storytelling of movies. Movies have really educated contemporary audiences to be the most intelligent sophisticated audiences in history. We don't any longer need to have the relationship between one scene and the next explained. We will figure it out ourselves.

Oh I adored Mickey Mouse when I was a child. He was the emblem of happiness and funniness. You went to the movies then you saw two movies and a short. When Mickey Mouse came on the screen and there was his big head my sister said she had to hold onto me. I went berserk.

I'm not impressed by someone's degree... I'm impressed by them making movies.

It seems like the studios are either making giant blockbusters or really super-small indies. And the mid-level films I grew up on like 'Back to the Future' and all those John Hughes movies the studios aren't doing. It's hard to get them on their feet.

Sometimes I make very selfish choices like I did 'Once Upon A Time' for my inner 8-year-old and my hypothetical future child. I've done some movies because I would regret them if I didn't but other projects I've done because they've scared me or if I felt I needed to do a big romantic comedy to help me professionally.

What I fell in love with as a child was 'My Fair Lady ' 'Funny Face ' 'American in Paris ' and 'Singin' in the Rain.' Just perfect movies to me and I was dancing. I started ballet when I was three. And I fell in love with those movies and fell in love with Audrey Hepburn and Leslie Caron.

I watched a lot of silent directors who were absolutely great like John Ford and Fritz Lang Tod Browning and also some very modern directors like The Coen Brothers. The directors take the freedom within their own movies to be melodramatic or funny when they chose to be. They do whatever they want and they don't care about the genre.

Movies don't look hard but figuring it out getting the shape of it getting everybody's character right and having it be funny make sense and be romantic it's creating a puzzle. Yes having been a writer for so long I have an awareness of when things are going awry but it doesn't mean I know how to fix them.

I think it's actually a misperception that I am a comedic actress. I do more drama than comedy but very little of it has been seen. When you are in big funny movies and they do well and your little part in it kind of explodes people perceive you as a comedian.

Back in the '70s like one of my favorite movies ever was 'The Bad News Bears' and that was a kids' movie but I don't think of it that way. I think of it as just a great movie because Walter Matthau was so funny and so harsh with those kids.

It's a required part of your film history to know who Woody is. His movies are so wonderful and not just funny but so insightful about human behavior.

For some reason and I don't know why but I don't think that I'm funny in California. So I always want to do my movies east somewhere.

I had seen movies before that that had made me laugh but I had never seen anything even remotely close to as funny as Richard Pryor was just standing there talking.

Movies these days have made killers into funny people. What's that all about? I've got kids and family and friends and I don't like bad things. I don't think they're funny and it's irresponsible to make movies that don't show you how that's not good.

People used to be funny about approaching me but now they seem to think I'm as sane as anyone who's done what I've done in movies can be.

It's a funny thing: You want so badly for people to see what you do - you're proud of it - and I like the effect that movies have on people. But the attention can also make me uncomfortable.

I had to act in a school play when I was about ten years old. I really didn't want to do it. But everyone had to do it so I didn't have a choice. A talent agent came and watched it and later gave me some work. It's funny because I'd always known that I wanted a movie career. I just didn't think that I would be in the movies.