I tend to be attracted to characters who are up against a wall with very few alternatives. And the film then becomes an examination of how they cope with very few options. And that's, I guess, what interests me in terms of human behavior.
In my life, I've lived in very different kinds of places - very tiny rooms when I was young. And you do learn to cope with it. The funny thing is, as you begin to inhabit larger places, it's very interesting how quickly you adapt to your space. What seems enormous at first becomes natural after a few weeks.
The more serious the situation, the funnier the comedy can be. The greatest comedy plays against the greatest tragedy. Comedy is a red rubber ball and if you throw it against a soft, funny wall, it will not come back. But if you throw it against the hard wall of ultimate reality, it will bounce back and be very lively. Very, very few people understand this.
I was in a band called Episode Six with Roger Glover, which was more of a harmony band, really. At one gig, there were a few dodgy characters leaning up against the wall of the venue - and we ended up joining their band. Purple was the talk of every musician in the country - they had something new and very exciting.
I had very supportive parents that made the way for me, even at a time when there were very few women - no women, really; maybe two or three women - and very few, fewer than that, African-American women heading in this direction, so there were very few people to look up to. You just had to have faith.
I studied philosophy in school, became disgruntled by the fact that it was a way to have a very interesting conversation with very few people about very few things in very narrow terms and yet still believed (and still believe today) that there was something that I was getting myself involved in when I said I wanted to study philosophy.
When I started, there very few women at the managing director level and very few who had families, which is something that was important to me. So it's not like when I looked up I could say, 'Well, that's who I want to be.'
'Wall Street' was a very important movie for me in terms of my career. I won an Oscar, and then the film 'Fatal Attraction' came right after it.
When I started, there were very few women at the managing director level and very few who had families, which is something that was important to me. So it's not like, when I looked up, I could say, 'Well, that's who I want to be.'
While it may not have been the flashiest or the most creative, I brought a very unique skill set, and I executed in a fashion that very few have done before me and, I think, very few will do after me.
For an actor like me, there are very few options to choose from.
It's very much an exploration of the human condition and how different people react and respond to their lives. And what they present to the world, in terms of who they are as characters and what is going on behind the mask, in terms of what demons their holding... and how that interacts.
Dramas for me are where it's at, but a great drama, a great character-driven drama, there's very few of them that get made; there's very few of them that actually make it to theaters. There's just very few of them.
I had a lot of fantasies about being an architect when I was young, and I think I still do. On a visceral level, I'm very intellectually and emotionally attracted to acknowledging how space functions in our lives, both in terms of pleasure and in terms of control, and in terms of all those factors that form a life. I'm also very anxious and maybe repulsed by how superficial that whole dialogue can become.
I think I was always writing books that had very clear scenic structures. I do tend to write in scenes. I do tend to have a fair amount of dialogue. And I do tend to use stories that don't sprawl all over the place, that have a very sharp focus in terms of how they unfold in time.
'Out of Sight' is one of my favorite films ever. Love Steven Soderbergh. 'Goodfellas' was a huge influence on me in terms of the use of camera. 'Black Orpheus,' a beautiful love story that very few people actually have seen, and that was an influence on 'Beyond the Lights,' too, in terms of the look of the film.
I think the book struck me in a few ways that I thought very interesting to pick it as my first martial arts film. It has a very strong female character and it was very abundant in classic Chinese textures.