I Grew Up On Movie Sets, So

Being A Star Doesn't Last. That's Not What Life Should Be About. It's A Complete Illusion That Really Has Nothing To Do With You. For Me, Finding Out About Life Is The Most Important Thing.

I Wasn't Really Quite Sure Where Heath Ledger Came From, And I Think That's The Feeling Most People Got When They Were Around Him And Why He Was So Extraordinary.

Ang [lee] Gave Us A Lot Of Books About Cowboys Who Had Been Gay Or Stories About It And All That Stuff. And I Just Talked To A Lot Of My Friends - Who [was] Their First, Particularly Same-sex, First Situation. That Was Fascinating To Me - Trying To Learn What That Was In A Certain Period Of Time. Certain Age. The Secrecy Involved In It. All Those Things.

I Think It's More, At Least At The Time, A Sense Of Abstraction. My Mind Doesn't Really Work In A Way Where There's A Definitive Sense Of Something. I Go One Way And Then It Opens Up Into A Million Different Ideas, And Somehow, When You Look At The Art, Buddhist Art, Or Particularly Tibetan Art, You Know, It's A Similar Thing. All Of A Sudden There Are A Million Lotus Leaves And You're Following One To The Next And To Another, And I Related To That, And It Felt Simple And Easy To Me. And It Made Me Feel Smart.

I Have Always Had A Deep Belief That Every Movie, Every Artistic Expression, Is Political. Don't Be Fooled. Even Ones That We Wouldn't Consider Overtly Political Are Political. When We Spend Time Doing Anything, Whether It's Distraction Or Whether It's Something That We Have To Face, It Is Always Political. That's My Belief.