"I saw Robert Flaherty’s 1922 quasi-documentary film in fourth grade. We watched it on some weird early-’70s, pre-video school format where the teacher popped something that looked like a tape into a machine that jiggled as it played ten-minute segments on a small, dark screen. It looked like shit but the film left an indelible impression on me. The blubber-eating scene, mixed with the perfumed scent of Eugenie, my fourth-grade crush—oops, I mean, teacher—is a heady sense-memory."

"Well, let’s go one, La Strada, which is Federico Fellini’s movie with Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina. When was the first time I saw it? Oh, my God, I was in high school. To me, it felt like a fable, and it was beautiful and so moving, and I cry every time I see it. I’m almost crying thinking about it. How both broadly drawn and subtle the characters are, and how much sympathy Fellini has for the people in the movie. Have you ever seen it?"

"I first saw Wanda when I was in Paris making a movie and a cinephile friend of mine told me I had to see it, so I found a DVD of it, but I’ve still never seen it projected. When I was making Invisible Life, I was looking at films like it as a way to build my characters. I was very inspired by Barbara Loden’s performance and the drifting aspect of that character, who was very similar to one of the women in my film."

I just like Michael J. Fox. Michael was perfect for the role, he was funny, he kept the story moving and his character was engaging and sympathetic. I was young when I saw the movie, and I loved the idea of time travel. I dreamed I could be in an adventure like that and go everywhere in my time machine. The special effects at the time were very impressive to me. As a kid I felt this was a real adventure and I am an adventure nut.

"The first film that really inspired me… When I came out to L.A. to be an actor, I wasn’t really taking anything very seriously. I thought, maybe I’ll be a model, I could do some modeling, or maybe some commercial acting or whatever, and I thought that would be a career. Then I saw Taxi Driver. Taxi Driver is a movie that changed my life and made me a serious actor. Scorsese and De Niro. I give credit for anything that I’ve ever done as an actor."

"This film was my introduction to New York-based films and actually New York City at all. Once I saw this, I knew that I, too, would be destined for a penthouse Manhattan apartment with trampolines, pinball machines and bunk beds. The romance with Elizabeth Perkins is believable despite its high concept and just adorable and laugh-out-loud funny. It’s also heartbreaking, and makes me cry every time I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it 15 times. Actually, I cry quite a bit in general."

"I actually went to the theater as an eleven-year-old and saw this film in its original release. (I know. Weird.) The cinematography (Raoul Coutard), the editing (Françoise Bonnot won the Oscar), the score by Mikis Theodorakis, and the performances by Yves Montand, Irene Papas, and Jean-Louis Trintignant created an overall intensity that overwhelmed me. One of the most searing political thrillers ever made, and one of Costa-Gavras’s greatest, it won best foreign language film at the Academy Awards in 1970."