The ladder of success in Hollywood is usually a press agent, actor, director, producer, leading man; and you are a star if you sleep with each of them in that order. Crude, but true.
It was not my class of people. There was not a producer, a press agent, a director, an actor.
If I had to rate them in order of preference, it would be writer, director, actor and then producer.
Earlier in my career, I needed to be the writer, casting director, set designer, leading man, and producer. I've been eliminating a lot of those jobs. I'm an executive producer right now. I still get to pick the best screenplays.
Oh, well, in Los Angeles everybody is an actor, or a producer, or a writer, or a director, or an agent, or... So everybody understands the hours.
Press agent - a man who hitches his braggin' to a star.
No support of one star or one director or one producer can make any individual actor a star. You have to connect with the audience; the audience have to like you. That is something that cannot be manipulated or fought for or tried for. Either they like you, or they don't.
I can meet any producer in Hollywood and look them in the eye, knowing I didn't sleep with them, or do drugs with them.
I would like - either as an actor, or producer or even director - to do something sci-fi or action-related. I like sci-fi, always have, 'Star Trek' and 'Star Wars' and all that stuff.
In Korea, the director has the final word. If the director makes a decision, that decision is final. In Hollywood, every decision needs to go through the producer, the studio, and sometimes even the main actor. There is a certain procedure that needs to be followed.
I want to be a man's man - not a kid actor or a glitzy pop star but a no-bullshit leading man.
The producer can put something together, package it, oversee it, give input. I'm the kind of producer that likes to take a back seat and let the director run with it. If he needs me, I'm there for him. As a director, I like to have the producer there with me. As a producer, I don't want to be there because I happen to be a director first and foremost, I don't want to "that guy."
An actor like me hardly ever sees a producer. My agent will say, how about Coogan for the part. The producer will say yes. So you never see the producer.
Hollywood is a double feeling. Love and hate. With a talented film director, I cannot resist. They are such charming and intelligent people. But each time, it is very difficult to deal with other people. I have to satisfy other people. The director or the producer. Not me. I have to satisfy myself. But then I have to deliver my music.
The action star's life is very short. Back in Asia, I can do whatever I want to do. I'm the producer, I'm the director, I can do so many things, but in Hollywood any time I present a script they say: "No, no, no, Rush Hour 3, Rush Hour 4."
If I have to wear a hat as a producer to do that, then I'm willing to do that. An actor's, producer's and director's point-of-view is all the same to me, as long as the story's being told.
For an actor to be working at all is a kind of miracle, because most actors aren't. So it's just silly for a working actor to say, 'Oh, I don't care if anybody knows I'm gay' especially if you're a leading man. Personally, I wouldn't advise a gay leading man-type actor to come out.