I have come close to producing films. But generally by the time they hit the screen there's about 50 people with producer credits so what's the point. I usually find scripts I like with no money attached and take them to producers that I know and try to raise finance.

But thankfully my first album 'Wide Screen ' was sort of a critics' darling - everyone raved about it but no one bought it. They only manufactured 10 000 copies I wasn't even in the running for failure!

There comes a point in your moviegoing life where you look at the screen and then you look at the world and you ask 'What is going on?' You want the movies to show you the chaos and mess and risk and failure that are normal for a lot of us. Generally the movies hide all of that.

It is often difficult to watch yourself onscreen especially 60-feet high. As an actor it is an uncomfortable experience.

I'd done table reads for my own screenplays and I always thought they were so much fun. Why couldn't we do these for other classic screenplays and bring them to life? You can experience live theater where you get to see plays produced by different directors and different casts but there's really nothing like that for movie scripts.

With 'Good Will Hunting ' Miramax made certain the recruited audience wasn't expecting to laugh at Robin Williams like they normally do. From my limited experience you can really blow test screenings by conducting them in the wrong way.

I'm a good son a good father a good husband - I've been married to the same woman for 30 years. I'm a good friend. I finished college I have my education I donate money anonymously. So when people criticize the kind of characters that I play on screen I go 'You know that's part of history.'

I had never done anything with blue screen before or prosthetics or anything like that. Lord of the Rings was like stepping into a videogame for me. It was another world completely. But to be honest I basically did it so that I could have the ears. I thought they would really work with my bare head.Working with Martin Scorsese was an absolute minute-by-minute education without him ever being grandiose about it.

Screenplays I didn't really care about journalism travel books getting my writer friends to write about their dreams or something. I just determined to write the books I had to write.

Technology has a great advantage in that we are capable of creating dinosaurs and show them on the screen even though they are extinct 65 million years. All of a sudden we have a fantastic tool that is as good as dreams are.