I guess all my films are about resolving conflicts - and they're all love stories. If they weren't, I couldn't make them.

Even if it's a thriller or a comedy, it's always a love story for me, and that's what I concentrate on, because the love stories are my surrogates for the argument: two people in conflict that see life differently.

When you rehearse a play, you spend four weeks with one goal in mind - to wean the actor away from you. You want the actor to become completely independent and to understand all the emotional and psychological moves within the character.

It's my job to motivate the audience to believe. I have to get them to suspend their judgment in favor of involvement.

I read the script and decide if a particular character looks fun to play. I look for complexity and a sense of humor. Those are crucial, real things to life.

I left home at 17, traveled. I got married when I was 21. That's a young age. As it turned out, things were fine, then not so fine, and then it was a blunder. That happens all the time.

At his heart, Shakespeare was a YA author. So many of his plays are set with high school-aged characters. He understood the passion, the confusion and drama that marks that life stage.

I married way out of my pay grade. I have no idea how that happened.