“I've spent most of my life trying to make actors comfortable, which I think is 9…” — Sydney Pollack

I knew I wasn't going to be any great shakes as an actor - the way I looked, I would play the soda jerk or the friend of a friend.

If you have a career like mine, which is so identified with Hollywood, with big studios and stars, you wonder if maybe you shouldn't go off and do what the world thinks of as more personal films with lesser-known people. But I think I've fooled everybody. I've made personal films all along. I just made them in another form.

Stars are like thoroughbreds. Yes, it's a little more dangerous with them. They are more temperamental. You have to be careful because you can be thrown. But when they do what they do best - whatever it is that's made them a star - it's really exciting.

There will be people who are sensitive about seeing the American point of view presented as less than sympathetic.