Women have always had equal importance onstage, and working with them must have altered my sensibilities. I've never felt sensitive to the whole issue, because being macho has never been a problem with me.
If I find something and feel as though I can contribute to [it] in a way and feel I'm in it, whatever that means, I'm expressing something that I feel is a way to exercise my talent and help communicate a role as a human being in a movie, I will do that.
I'm much more a European Italian than I am an American Italian, and I've always felt that that style of acting comedy is in me. I put comedy as much as I can into all my movies, if I can help it.
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.
Everything changes with age. The parts change with age, your feelings about them change, roles that I would've wanted to play 10 years ago, I don't want to play now.
It's so funny when people who are not used to making movies get into it. You just can't believe how insufferably boring it is. Waiting around and doing these lines over and over and finally having to go in and loop the lines and dub them.
Jamie Foxx does a good rendition of me. It's a real gift, mimicry of that kind, the tonal thing. It's sort of like having a talent for playing an instrument.
When you do these things, you sort of take the journey. The journey is all about how I can interweave the Oscar Wilde story, the story of Salome, the play itself and what it is, what it contains, and my journey as an actor, as a director, as a filmmaker, as a person struggling with whatever I'm struggling with - my own celebrity, my own life. This is semi-autobiographical in terms of my commitment to this kind of thing.
My weaknesses... I wish I could come up with something. I'd probably have the same pause if you asked me what my strengths are. Maybe they're the same thing.