"Unfortunately, I keep saying ones that I had something to do with. I was the stunt coordinator on that, and I actually played the cop that arrested her at the end. If I have any kind of acting ability, it’s from watching people like Charlize Theron. I was on the set every day. I didn’t have all that much to do, stuntwise — just safety issues and a couple of little stunt things — but I could watch her work, and see how she got to certain places, and that’s the best possible training I think an actor can have. [Theron did] subtle things right before certain scenes, to get to a certain place. I think, even subconsciously, I’ve incorporated some of those techniques. It’s nothing I can really describe. For the violent stuff, it doesn’t take long. It’s just very easy for me to get from my personality to the murderously violent personality. I think I’m closer to that than most people are, so it’s a short trip. [laughs] But for the emotional stuff, and crying scenes and stuff like that, what works best for me is to use music that means something to me, that reminds me of something in the past that isn’t a good memory. Something like that. That helps me to where I can convincingly cry, because I’ve seen so many actors — and these are whom I consider good actors — who are not convincing when they’re crying. It’s just not believable, it’s too forced. I think that’s obviously one of the harder things to do. Take [Hatchet series’] Danielle Harris. Most often, when you have a character who has to have a lot of emotion like that, you start out as a regular character and become that, like Tamara [Feldman] did in the first movie. Starts out normal and then becomes emotional at the end. Well, because this picked up from the very last frame of the first movie, from the very beginning, Danielle has to be crazy emotional. She lost her whole family and found them dead. So, it’s one thing to be able to get to an emotional point, but to have to do it so many times is the hard part. Lots of people can make themselves cry once, but let me see you do it ten times in one day, and some of those times being after lunch, where you’re talking to friends, and then you gotta get back to that place. It’s not that you just do it one time and they film it and you’re done. You gotta do all the coverage and make sure the emotion matches. That’s the hard part."

"Ah, City Lights. [It] doesn’t [really] make an effort to do comedy or [try] to make me cry. It just flows so naturally. A true artist. And you don’t have to be sensible [to watch Chaplin’s films]. You [can be] a kid but you still can understand his films. [One] doesn’t need education, academic education, to understand or enjoy his films. And I would see in the theater, in the audience, all kinds of people: children, parents, grandparents, poor, rich, very rich people, everybody in the theater enjoying his films. Chaplin really influenced me on being an actor. And I remember, back in India, Raj Kapoor, was greatly influenced by Charlie Chaplin. [Kapoor] became one of the biggest filmmakers of our country. You know, [Kapoor] is one of the few filmmakers who are very very known in that part of the world, especially Russia and the Middle East, the Far East. All the countries, one of the most famous filmmakers, Raj Kapoor. And he was influenced by Charlie Chaplin. Everybody says, “Are you influenced by Raj Kapoor?” and I say, “No, I’m not inspired by Raj Kapoor, I’m inspired by Charlie Chaplin.” It all goes back to that. And if you see my films, films like Woh 7 Din, Mr. India, and all those kinds of films, there is a bit of Chaplin. In every role which I do to this day, there is that flavor, because I’ve been influenced by all this. I will always think, if there is a scene, I will always have him in mind. Even in Slumdog Millionaire… [My performance in Slumdog Millionaire] is very animated, it’s very flamboyant. That influence always works when I’m doing those kinds of roles. There are certain times when I’m slightly larger than life and animated, still in control and still looking natural, and not looking like a buffoon, and not looking caricaturish. Still looking real. I think some way it is the influence of Charlie Chaplin. And even if I can achieve one percent or two percent of what he has achieved in this life in terms of art, in terms of what he has done, I’ll feel pretty fulfilled. When I try to do stuff which he has done, a little bit here and there, then I realize what a great man he was, and what a great character he was, and what he accomplished. Very, very difficult. I heard that he would rehearse for hours and days for every punch. For every punch. And there are times when I’m doing my films, I say, “Let’s copy this punch on this film.” And we could never get it. We just couldn’t get it."

"I’ve always found Robert Montgomery to be a somewhat mysterious figure. He was in comedies, but he never seemed very funny. He played likable people but was not well liked. His right-wing politics angered many on the left. In 1947, the year this film came out, he was the president of the Screen Actors Guild. As a friendly witness for HUAC, he hurt many careers. He directed and starred in two great, innovative noirs, Lady in the Lake and Ride the Pink Horse, both made in 1947, and then stopped directing. Wanda Hendrix, who is superb in this film, really didn’t work much after Ride the Pink Horse, which is another aspect that makes watching the film curious and special. Starring as Pancho, the excellent Thomas Gomez became the first Hispanic American to be nominated for an Oscar. This postwar noir film begins at a bus stop in a Mexican border town. When Montgomery, as Lucky Gagin, steps off the bus, you pretty much know he’s going to get mixed up in something dark. The film has a haunting score, and it is reminiscent of another Mexican border “noir” by another actor-director, Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil. There are a couple of things that make Ride the Pink Horse art-house cool. First, it’s filled with long, complicated takes, which were innovative for the time. I remember sitting with Martin Scorsese, who turned me on to this movie. He kept trying to figure out how Montgomery had done the opening shot, where he gets off the bus and goes into the bus station, then back outside again. Scorsese said, “There was no Steadicam. I don’t see tracking. How did he do it?” So look for that! There’s sentimentality in Montgomery’s directing that contrasts with hard-boiled Lucky Gagin and that gives the film heart. Dorothy B. Hughes is the author of the books that both Ride the Pink Horse and In a Lonely Place are based on. These stories have something in common. A violent man is changed by the innocent love of a woman. In In a Lonely Place, he changes too late and loses the girl. In Ride the Pink Horse, Gagin is a solitary and cynical figure. Even while Pila is helping him, he derides her with all kinds of racist remarks. Yet she is his savior and continues to help him. It’s the oddball nature of their relationship that hooks you. He’s so powerful, such a tough guy, yet he needs this child to help him. She in turn is drawn to him. They can’t be together romantically, but there is love between them. She saves his life and his soul by her intervention."