My son loves swords and shields and dragons.
Both me and Ishmeet were very naughty. We used to have my grandfather's swords in the house. We used to take all these swords and take all the showpieces Mom had and slice them one by one. He actually locked my nana in the kitchen once for two hours.
If my edge is dull, my sword is dull, and I don't want to fight another guy whose sword is dull. If you've got two steel swords going back and forth hitting each other, what's gonna happen? Both of them are going to get sharper. Everybody that's in the industry has lost their edge.
I collect swords, but I'm not really a swordsman.
My first movie was 'The Mask Of Zorro,' and that was all swords and horses and swashbuckling, and I thought, 'This is what movies are.' Obviously, I never made another one like that again; those are very rare.
In truth, my Anglophilia is fundamentally bookish: I yearn for one of those country house libraries, lined on three walls with mahogany bookshelves, their serried splendor interrupted only by enough space to display, above the fireplace, a pair of crossed swords or sculling oars and perhaps a portrait of some great English worthy.
What populates a comic-book convention? Well there's actors, and there's dealers, and there's comic-book artists and writers, and there's cosplay people, toy sales people, people who are selling trading cards, and people selling swords. It's not a flea market.
When you get to the point where you're established enough that people link you with something, especially being an action hero babe, it's awesome. Because then you can fight the battles and have the crossbows and wrestle with swords and ride the horses because you're already believable; people see you in that genre.
For me, any fiction of nobles and swords necessarily has to be a story of corruption, injustice and savagely violent conflict - because any other treatment is going to have all the heft and realistic honesty of a bedtime fairy tale for five year olds.
Fire and swords are slow engines of destruction, compared to the tongue of a Gossip.
