When I read Thirteen Days I was moved by it. It was just a great time for the world in terms of looking back in history and seeing how we got ourselves into trouble and how we got ourselves out of trouble.

When I make a film I’m away from home for two to three months. So I want my kids to look at my films one day and say I love his movies I love his choices-because he loved them.

We all have that burning question about what happens if we lose somebody we love especially if we lose them tragically. We wonder what fear was going on we wonder if we could have reached out and touched them held their hand looked in their eyes been there.

Money isn’t a major motivating force in my life. Nor is my profession. There are other things that I care more about than being an actor.

I’ve had some movies that have been ridiculed but that’s OK with me. I don’t feel that really defines me. Should I change who I am to be popular?

I wanted very much to do Traffic and at one point it looked like I was going to work on it. And then of course Catherine Zeta-Jones had her relationship with Michael Douglas and it suddenly didn’t happen.

I know I have this level of celebrity of fame international national whatever you want to call it but it’s a pretty surreal thing to think sometimes that you’re in the middle of another famous person’s life and you think to yourself ‘How the hell did I get famous? What is this some weird club that we’re in?’

I haven’t lived a perfect life. I have regrets. But that’s from a lifetime of taking chances making decisions and trying not to be frozen. The only thing that I can do with my regrets is understand them.

I believe people who go into politics want to do the right thing. And then they hit a big wall of re-election and the pettiness of politics. In the end politics gets in the way of the business of people.

Failure doesn’t kill you… it increases your desire to make something happen.