And my first film was Carnal Knowledge, another amazing experience, largely because of Mike Nichols, who would tell me you can't do anything wrong because you're doing everything right.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I did my first film when I was in the final year of my graduation. At that time, I was still a kid, and I couldn't read the industry very well.
I'm a Method actor. I spent years training for the drinking and carousing I had to do in this film.
I had a pretty steep learning curve in film - as I'm still learning.
In my early days, I didn't know what a good film or a bad film was, and I was trying to make some money. As it happens I was lucky. I made some good films.
'Sabotage' was an opportunity. That was journeyman work, but the irony is I learned more off that movie on what filmmaking is and isn't than everything else combined. A lot of lessons, and it will impact me for the rest of my career.
I always start a film thinking I know how to do it, then I learn all over again.
I learned a lot about filmmaking from my dad. Starting when I was a child, I would listen to my dad as an actor, writer, director and producer talking about films - you know what the treatment would be in the opening, in the middle, and in the ending.
My first film, 'Like Minds,' was with Toni Colette, who was extraordinary. I mean it was basically a mini-masterclass for acting on film at a time when all you could probably see were my eyebrows bouncing up and down on screen.
When I worked on 2001 - which was my first feature film - I was deeply and permanently affected by the notion that a movie could be like a first-person experience.
Going into my second film as a director, it's night and day of what it was like going into my first film. It doesn't matter what you know in your head and what you've been taught until you're there and doing it; it's a whole new ball game.