What does my performance have to do with Russell Crowe's? Nothing. If I play Gladiator and we all play Gladiator with Ridley Scott in the same amount of time, maybe we have a chance to see who did it best.
There's a certain relief to just being the guy who puts on the costume and walks onset and gets to prance or stomp around in a Ridley Scott or Baz Luhrmann movie.
All I can say is working with Ridley Scott is a dream come true.
Getting the call from Ridley Scott made me think that sometimes you just need to go to work.
The things that I've enjoyed most are not really science fiction. They are not much fun to make because there are so many toys involved. They are fun for directors who like toys, like Ridley Scott, but they are not a lot of fun to make. A lot of hanging around, changing this and that.
Working with Ridley is working with one of the great filmmakers and one of the great raconteurs. You know, it's like, a dinner with Ridley Scott or a dinner with Martin Scorsese? You just want to cut your arm off to get those.
I wanted to be Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton, Stanley Kubrick, David Cronenberg, Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and Hitchcock. I'd wanted to be a director since 13, and horror and the suspense thriller were the most powerful genres to me.
I had this extraordinarily bizarre moment when, two Fridays ago, my missus gave birth to our second child at 11am and by the same time the following day I was sitting around a table with Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio in Rabat in Morocco, rehearsing a scene we were going to shoot the next day.
There have been things over the years that didn't work. 'Body Of Lies,' directed by Ridley Scott, which I did with Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio, is a really tight action thriller, but when it opened in the U.S. it was number two to 'Beverly Hills Chihuahua.'
A good director is like a good coach. You want to play for him. You want to really show him your good stuff. You don't want to let that person down. Ridley Scott is one of those guys.
