Biography

Suburbia... is the one place in the world that's further away than anything else.

[on The Leopard (1963)] We came out with a sense of the utter deadliness of the cinema. The supposed brilliance of Visconti, the supposed stardom of Burt Lancaster. He gave a moving performance, I suppose, but who is not moved by a dose of salts?

[on Ray Stark] It was difficult to listen with both ears to such a man.

[on working with Stanley Kubrick on Eyes Wide Shut (1999)] I sort of likened him to Bluebeard. Each bride was vaguely aware there had been earlier brides but you didn't actually meet them or discover where they were interred. So, one always thinks, "He won't do anything like that to me." And of course, he always does! But if one never touches anything in life which is either polluted or even poisonous to one, one doesn't actually have much experience. So, I wasn't going to miss working with Kubrick, but I did kind of know what was coming in that regard.

[on Eyes Wide Shut (1999)] It was his final film, but what I thought was that it wasn't final. The fact that Stanley died in the March of a year when the film didn't come out until July makes it absolutely certain that every single second between what turned out to be the day of his death and the opening of the movie, had he been alive, he would have been tinkering and re-shooting - he had an infinite capacity for taking pains - and he wasn't alive to take them. So, the film was not correct. Equally, I think it's fair to say he was not at the height of his powers when he was making it, and Stanley was dying. You know, you've only got to feel vaguely unwell to know that you can't actually be on top of your game, and he was dying. So, you know, the film showed signs of age.