Growing up, you tended to just go through school to get out, then figure out what you want to do in this big ball of mud.

Clothes have memories, and sometimes you don't want to remember. People remember where they bought the clothes, who gave them, or where they stole them from.

To supply people for ages in camps makes no sense... you have to rebuild that cabana that they rent out to tourists on the weekend. They need help getting their fields repaired and their boats repaired.

Actors get to go to these amazing worlds. In 'Terminator,' I was a cyborg with feelings; in 'Avatar,' I lived for 15 months on a fantastical planet, and in 'Clash of the Titans,' I get to fight a scorpion the size of a dump truck. It's a bizarre job, but you explore yourself.

I can always track my career by the children - I started writing right after the 14-year-old was born, and sold my first book just in time to pay for the birth of the 12-year-old.

If I had a choice as to my perfect career, I would make a couple of films a year and then concentrate on natural history.

A franchise player, to me, is a guy like Kirby Puckett, Cal Ripken, a guy who's been in one organization through their entire career.

OK, I wasn't as successful as, say, Julia Roberts, but I'd spent years in a very respectable career, some big American films but a host of other smaller, really exciting, maybe experimental films, being paid rubbish but working with fine people, that was what I thought I was known for.