Pastoral Resources

I go to Malawi twice a year. It's where two of my children were adopted from, and I have a lot of projects there that I go and check up on and children who I look after. It's sort of a commitment that I've made to this country and the hundreds of thousands of children there who have been orphaned by AIDS.

They say I was a bad Batman, that it was my fault, that I buried the franchise. But the truth is, it was a big project. I was pretty intimidated in that world. I did the best I could in the situation I was given.

As you get older and ease your way into being a character actor you have to be comfortable with where you are in life and career, and I'm very comfortable with what I'm doing - working on projects I'm proud of.

If it is indeed impossible - or at least very difficult - to inhabit the consciousness of an animal, then in writing about animals there is a temptation to project upon them feelings and thoughts that may belong only to our own human mind and heart.

Most of my time, energy and other resources I use to nurture my projects.

If you can help other people understand those truths - and in my mind, the only way I know to do that is with large scale, multi-year research projects, where you start with a question and then very rigorously and comprehensively answer that question.

To be honest, producing records interests me less at the moment and I really don't want to get involved in album projects that are going to take up a lot of time.

The day Tarzan opened in London, I sat in a hotel room and discussed the project in detail.

Each thing leapfrogs. I do a Genesis project - like now, we're just finishing off an album - and then by the time the album is doing its thing, I could do nothing or I could do a film.

Everything changes as a mother. Yes, work has changed. The projects that I choose are even more important to me now. The world he's growing up in and the kind of stimulus that is out there; they are so precious and I'd do anything to protect him.

I felt for a long time that this is what I want to do so I'm happy at this point to just take my time and work on projects that I feel strongly about, and the rest of the time just live my life.

That's a great feeling to know that I'm going into a project that I have no idea what will become of that movie, but I really trust Ang Lee. And I really trusted Ron. It's just really nice to work with people that you feel that way about.

I'm so happy in the projects that I'm able to make, to be involved in projects like this. This isn't always where it was at for me, I started working when I was a kid. I'm just a different person now, I'm 30. I started working when I was 11 and it's a different ballgame.

You wouldn't recognize me from one project to the next.

They're reacting and that's wonderful. It's better than them sitting there doing nothing. I say make them react - do whatever's in your power to move the audience, and if that's where it is, and there where it is with America, sex and violence, then I say project it.

The structural thinking I use in the concert hall is unnecessary to most film projects, and most film composers make better use of the enormous range of pop and other materials and techniques required of them than I probably would, faced with the same challenge.

I think sometimes people project things on you, but I'm trying to handle everything that's happened to me with a certain amount of grace, dignity and good manners. You just can't necessarily win all the time.

I never take on anything that is just for the money or just for, you know. I always have to connect with it in a very personal way because I believe the audience will sense whether I'm into it or not, so I don't take on projects that I'm not really passionate about.

Everybody in the real world will agree - the moment a project is behind deadline, quality assurance tends to go out the window.

Sorry, but there is no pleasure in finding new ways of saying the same stuff about projects which tanked.