Actors aren't stupid, mostly, and if there's a sensibility and an aesthetic that a director's going for, if you're aware of that too, you can do things to help that.
Somehow, we [ Tan Dun and director Chen Kaige] were all privileged at the time; we could be outside of China. But at the moment, we had no sense of what the future was going to be like.
Obviously there was Keith Haring and Robert Mapplethorpe, but Howard was on the brink of becoming a famous director - it didn't happen because he died.
I thought it was a huge conflict of interest to be the director and the subject - it's very sketchy territory to be in. I've seen what's happened to other directors who have done that.
ADMIRABLY BOLD. There's something grand about the film's sincerity and the intensity of its emotions and something fresh and bold about the way director Gray uses the conventions of romantic melodrama.
We make a contract within ourselves as actors or directors or writers about how much of ourselves we let into projects. You can actually figure out before you work on something how much blood you will have to let emotionally.