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I now have two different audiences. There's the one that has been watching my action films for 20 years, and the American family audience. American jokes, less fighting.

I get emotionally attached with every film I do, and that stops me from being critical. I can't fight my emotions.

Very difficult to understand American audience, what they like, what they don't like. Some movie I like very much, it doesn't work. Some movie I don't like, it gets big box office. Very difficult.

As actors, we put in our best, but when people don't like a film, you have to learn to deal with it. I've learnt not to get too emotional.

It's so easy to manipulate an audience, but it's nearly always clear that you are being manipulated. I think even people that are not critically attuned are aware of cynical manipulation in film.

I think as an American society, when we're paying too many taxes or dealing with war, we don't want to see sad things at the movies.

This is the age of insincerity. The movies had the misfortune to come along in the twentieth century, and because they appeal to the masses there can be no sincerity in them.

I think if people who are attacking me or against me, if they would just watch one of my films, they would - they may not agree with me politically on all the things I'm saying. But they will know at the end of the film that I love this country and that I have a heart. And they'll have a good laugh throughout the film.

Lots of people think the violence in the films I make is overwhelming, but they think they're seeing something that they aren't seeing.

I like it when somebody tells me a story, and I actually really feel that that's becoming like a lost art in American cinema.