Comeback is a good word, man.
When I was 10 years old, we'd pick out a cow and boom! They'd hit it in the head with a hammer, lift it up by the back legs, and skin it in front of us. Then I'd take the head home and make soup
When things get dark, they're going to get darker, and at that very moment, that's when you hang on that much tighter because that's when salvation and light come.
No matter what our situation is, there's always a way to celebrate life and there's always a way to start again.
Doing this movie [Fast Food Nation] made me realize that our bodies are digesting things that it's not meant to digest. It's pretty bad for you. The cast is [now] very, very aware of where we get our food and what we put in our bodies.
I actually didn't read the book [Fast Food Nation]. I wasn't aware of it. But when I read the script, I thought "Wow. " It became a project that was just so exciting to be a part of. Maybe a few times in a career [you] get a chance for a role that really means something, and this was it.
As Latinos, we are so aware of what people go through in order to come to America. It's very interesting to do research on something that's been culturally a part of your existence.
Intellect has to surrender to instinct when it is time to play.
I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.
Maybe it's the remnants of my religious upbringing, but I do try and insert a sense of social justice into the work. For instance, to me, Mansfield Park is a story about servitude and slavery. Other people may have a problem with that, but that's how I read the book and so that's how I shot the movie.
I would like to see fewer actors modeling, or if they're going to model to the extent that they are modeling, then I think that models should be actors.