I suppose it's nice that I've made films that some people have heard of and respect. That's great. And it's certainly helpful in some regards, but they're really tough economic prospects. They always have been, and that's not necessarily getting any better. And not just the films, but it's also been a rough 10 years for that independent film market. And so I have stumbled onto this point in the timeline where the kind of stuff that I'm trying to do is not... it was a lot easier to know what to do with it 20 years ago.
The first 10 years, I was just building just to understand what I was doing and I didn't trust my intuition to just produce. Then, in the last five years, I have really been reflecting on what I am producing and what it is doing.
Any standup that you see who you go, 'Oh, wow, that guy's, you know, that guy's making it.' Inevitably, they've been doing it 10, 12 years - 10, 15 years. Because it takes time.
I think most of the time with independent films, you don't know where it's gonna end up. I've done a number of films that may never see the light of day, so it ends up being exclusively about the content, material, the characters and the story. Things that you maybe wouldn't get an opportunity to do otherwise. So, as an actor, obviously it's so different.
They held up 'The Outlaw' for five years. And Howard Hughes had me doing publicity for it every day, five days a week for five years.
My first 10-day contract in Dallas. It was long because we had five games in 10 days. Players get called up on a 10-day and their team might only have a schedule of three games. So I got to play in five games and I was fortunate for that.
The BFI recently did a study of the British films that have the most people of color in them in the last 10 years, and in the top 10, three of the films were my films. I've always been a glass-is-half-full person. I've always gone, "If people aren't going to do it, I'm going to do it".
You've got these big studio films and these tiny independent films now. It's very much either/or. With the independent films, it's always a beautiful risk - it might never be seen. With the studio films, you're conforming to the formula of what's always been in place.
I was the guy who had been bouncing around the film industry for years, and I'd been lucky if five or 10 people would see my movies, so Captain Jack did a big flip for my career.
You must prepare to quit, and they should start doing that from day one because the average life of a pro-football player is only three and a half years. It's not five. It's not seven. It's not 10.
I used to do lots of independent films and for a while I was very content living in New York City and doing independent movies and off-Broadway theater. I loved it, I had a really good time doing that, and I worked on a lot of projects that are very dear to my heart, both plays and films.
It makes me forget that I'm not going to be a major star and lead female in films whether it was 20 years ago, 10 years ago, five or in the future.
Something worth doing might take a while, so really flesh out the potential of the business and be honest about whether it's worth doing. If it's not a $100 million company in five years, maybe it'll take 10 or 15 years. If you're doing something that has a universal, timeless need, then you need to think of the company in a timeless way.
I request big films to give way for small movies as there are umpteen number of such films waiting to see the light of the day.
I have makeup that I can do in 15 minutes, 10 minutes, or five minutes, depending on what I'm doing that day. On a day when I'm shooting, it's 15 minutes. Five minutes is when I'm running around that day, and it's no big deal.
If you see films which have been successful over the last 10 years, the women in them have been in their 20s. 'The Dirty Picture' and 'English Vinglish' are two I can think of. But there are very few good roles for women in their 30s.