By the end of the shoot [of Wrestler], my trainer was pushing me up three flights of stairs to my house and holding my arm like I was an old cripple. I had three MRIs in the first two months of working on the film. I felt like it really was over by the time we started shooting the movie.
The negative about acting is that you have to spend a great deal of time away from your friends and loved ones, but it's not like working a 9-5 job and only having two or three weeks off a year. I may not have seen my girlfriend for two or three months, but then we can spend two or three months together solidly.
When my son was a mere three months old, I started working at the State Department. I was not only the youngest Assistant Secretary of State but I was also a breastfeeding mother. I'm the first to admit that this felt crazy at times, and the balancing act is never ever easy. But my two kids are the most wonderful things that have ever happened to me.
The first time I go out to Nashville, ever (at this point I had only heard the rumors about what it's like) I had three writing sessions set up. The first two canceled on me. I was kind of pissed off at that point. So I just went back to my hotel room and started writing. And even though I've been to L.A. and experienced a lot of things, at the end of the day I just start to feel like I'm playing acoustically at the first bar I ever played at.
When you're working with a script and you have three pages for that day, you have to shoot that. It can become sort of like a prison, because by the time you've shot what you need to shoot, you don't really have time to think or shoot anything else.
Saturday The 14th movie is a cult classic. And you know another one like that that I did, is Three O'Clock High. People come up to me about those two all the time. Film schools even study Three O'Clock High. Shot for shot, it's a textbook.
I actually had four space flights altogether, three times on shuttles. My second flight was really unique for me because I was going back into space, first of all. The first one was like an appetizer at a nice dinner. You know, you want to go up and you want more. So, the second time I got into space, it was neat because I got to actually do two space walks.
I was simultaneously shooting for 'Manikarnika' and 'Ek Je Chhilo Raja'. In two-and-a-half months, I took 23 flights, including an international flight to Los Angeles. It was physically very challenging, shooting for both. I would catch up on sleep on the flights.
In features, we're languid: we shoot one or two scenes over, like, three days. In TV, the pace is so different. You're shooting ten scenes a day, going way into the future or way back into the past. It's complete madness, and I'm just trying to keep up with this really electric pace.
I'm a grafter, I like working, but like for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the film company only paid me for the shooting schedule, which was supposed to last six months. But it lasted 11 months and you don't get paid for extra shooting.
I spent a long time on my first movie, which was the sequel to a short film that I did called 'Carne.' And I had no money. I shot it over a period of three years, a bit like David Lynch directed 'Eraserhead.'
Whenever there's a red carpet event coming up my trainer in LA that I see, I always come to her like three days before and go, 'Can you make me really thin in three days?' She's always like, 'If you come to me consistently all throughout the year, then yes I can. When you come to me with three days and ask to lose 10 pounds it's just not going to happen.' I'm like, 'Do your best. Please. Make me skinny.'
After three days of shooting with Donald [ Sutherland], I was the only one he worked with for the first three days of the movie [The Winter Of Our Discontent] because of the crazy schedule. We [shot] a lot of this stuff, some of it incredibly intense and emotional. We had never had a conversation during that whole time. We didn't have time.
I was in Rome this time for about three or four months, and I feel like, by the time I left, every single person in Rome had seen me at least 10 times riding my bicycle. When I first got there, it seemed like people were happy to see me and would say hello. And by the end, they were kind of bored of seeing me. And it was like, "Ugh, there he goes again".
Usually, you can live very well for two, three months, then you're in trouble. Every coach, I think, is like this. For two months, you're happy because you have time, and after two months, you miss adrenaline.
I became passionate about nature filmmaking when I graduated from UCLA, and one of the things I always wanted to do was shoot really high quality film, so I got into time-lapse photography - so that means when you shoot a flower, you're shooting, like, one frame every twenty minutes, so that's basically two seconds of a film per day.
On 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,' I spent two or three months learning how to ride a motorcycle. I wasn't really riding the motorcycle in 98 percent of the movie, but the shots of me getting on and off had to look like I had been doing it for years and years.