John Cusack

I remember the '80s being about the Cold War and Reagan and the homeless problem and AIDS. To me, it was kind of a dark, depressing time.

With acting, you wanna see if you can get into trouble without knowing how you're gonna get out of it. It's like the exact opposite of war, where you need an exit strategy. When you're acting, you should get all the way into trouble with no exit strategy, and have the cameras rolling.

I was a teen star. That's disgusting enough.

The film is not a success until it makes money. It's only good when there's a dollar figure attached to the box office.

I feel close to Lloyd in 'Say Anything'. He was like a super-interesting version of me. Only I'm not as good as him. Whatever part of me is romantic and optimistic, I reached into that to play Lloyd.

Acting can be pretty challenging. I can't say making a romantic comedy is challenging, but to do anything well, you have to put yourself into it.

But no, I don't really like romantic comedies, so I don't really care. I never go see 'em.

It's something we, guys, have all done. Made tapes for girls, trying to impress them, to meet them on a shared plane of aesthetics. Read them someone else's poetry because they do poetry better than you could do it, because you're too awkward to do it.

I have a bit of a rebellious nature.

Do I listen to pop music because I'm miserable or am I miserable because listen to pop music?

Most movies, once the action starts there's no more characters. You say a couple of dumb lines and then there's just explosions until the end.

It's like those high-school yearbook photos that everyone would rather not see: Oh my God, look at that mullet hair. I have those photos too, but for me, they're, like, entire movies. And they show them on cable.

I think being self-referential is really narcissistic. Who's to say anybody's even thinking of you that much? But some of these movies that I've done, people still recite lines to me, even 20 years later.

I was never into the popular school or clique or anything. Then I started doing movies when I was in high school, so then I got popular. Then the girls paid attention to you who didn't before.

I don't want to produce anymore small or independent movies because it's just too hard these days.

Usually I do everything reverse. I practice something in movies and then I try it in real life.

The movies have got more corporate, they're making fewer movies in general, and those they are making are all $200-$300m tent-pole releases that eat up all the oxygen.

It seems to me that one thing people do over and over again is try to figure out how to get married, stay married, fall in love, how to rekindle all this stuff. It seems to me to be a pretty eternal theme so I don't know if you can get typecast from making movies about men relating to women. It seems to be what is going on on the planet a lot.

I love these movies where it's just about the film. You don't have my face on the poster. It's all about the movie. I like that.

I like the George Romero films, which were really great, social satire movies really twisted.