I look forward to every script that comes down the pike.
Just learn the whole script before you start shooting. That makes shooting a joy. Even if they rewrite, it's easy.
I'm so touched that complete strangers will send me a script asking me to be in their film. That still amazes me - and sometimes for a lot of money too.
I read every script from beginning to end, and I read every draft that I can. I like the show, I like the character, and I want to protect both of those things.
I wrote [Collateral Beauty] on my own. I didn't get paid to write it. I didn't sell it as a pitch. It was an idea I had that I really, really felt needed to be in script form before showing it to anyone in the industry because of the uniqueness of the idea, and the weirdness of the idea, to be frank.
Once, I optioned a novel and tried to do a screenplay on it, which was great fun, but I was too respectful. I was only 100 pages into the novel and I had about 90 pages of movie script going. I realized I had a lot to learn.
When I was in New York, a lot of my friends were studying filmmaking and would bring their scripts to me, as I was a good script doctor. I would read their scripts and make corrections to them for $20 per script and was fascinated by films.
I liked it because it was such a dangerous script and showed just what human beings are capable of. Here was a movie in which Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt, who always win in every movie they ever do, simply don't win. I felt that was outrageous for a commercial movie.
Modern American war is as easy to script as a B movie.
If you read a script enough, especially a good script - I try to read it 40 to 50 times before you begin so you get a sense of the arc: what happens before, what happens after, what happens during.
I would take a bad script and a good director any day against a good script and a bad director.
What I appreciated was the fact that the script delved into how Australians were - and still are - condescended to by the English.
I think it's incumbent on actresses to bring something else to the part which isn't in the script.
It's always the script that's going to lure me. And I don't really care about the part.
Every script has things that would draw me away or draw me towards it. But I just try and choose as wisely as possible - when I get to choose.
The moment that you start to read a script, you're watching the movie in your mind, and that's the one moment that you have. Then, you go off to make the movie and you become so lost in it.
I would always rather do a mediocre script with a great filmmaker than a great script with a mediocre filmmaker.
I never had a movie that I wanted to do turned down in my whole life. I always write the script first so it speaks for itself.
I felt really comfortable [on The Maze Runner]. From day one, I loved the script and the story, and I thought it could be something really cool and interesting and original, in this generation of regurgitated projects and sequels and stuff, so I'm proud to be part of it.
The truth is, there are probably eight more Snow White scripts floating around out there. And once one Snow White script got hot, other people started pulling out their Snow White scripts.