I can't get my head around the fact that the technology of the first two movies which are forty years prior to Star Wars is so much better than any technology they had in Star Wars!

For me modern technology has ruined romance and movies - nobody can run to the airplane gate anymore.

The technology is really where all of the changes have taken place but the fundamentals of a good story being the basis of every good picture and really the only basis still remains the rule more so today I think because we've unfortunately weaned an audience from birth to kind of mindless movies.

Everything's changed. The technology is the big thing changing now the way movies like 'Alice' or 'Avatar' are made. And technology on the other side the audience side. Word spreads so fast now on a movie with the Internet and piracy is something coming down the line like in the music industry.

Standing beneath the white light of an Apple store is like standing on a Stanley Kubrick movie set. His '2001: A Space Odyssey' predicted Jobs and a future where technology was our friend. Kubrick of course didn't like what he saw. And occasionally I have my doubts.

I carry my own film guys with me now. People think that's a huge expense but with technology like it is these days it's not. You can film videos and everything with a Canon Mark II and shoot a movie. They're doing it for next to nothing by comparison. I can do ten videos for a project for the price of one mainstream video in the past.

I'm of the opinion that the technology is in a place where there's really no excuse not to just make your movie.

I've tried to make 'Strictly Ballroom' impossible to date. It does feel a bit '80s but I consciously made sure there was no technology in the movie that could date it.

You can alter movie singing so much because you go into the recording studio and just technology for recording has gotten so good you can hold out a note and they can combine a note from take 2 and a note from take 8.

Movie-making is telling a story with the best technology at your disposal.

I'm home schooled and I have a teacher that goes with me on all my movies.

I spent most of my high school years on movie sets and I'd have like one teacher which was really bad.

I decided at age 9 but I was reinforced at age 13 when a teacher told me I had talent. I can't say she really motivated me because I already knew. I knew I had talent. I went to the Jewish community theater and got in plays there. Then I went for the movies.'

If you put down a list of jobs doctor lawyer janitor teacher or movie star everybody would pick the movie star. And why? So you could lie around the pool drink margaritas and send money to your parents. So that's what I did.

You know how to tell if the teacher is hung over? Movie Day.

For the past few years I was the more visible Asian performer and I think it gave young girls a kind of role model showing it's possible to actually reach success doing movies.

I had come to the point when I realized it was unlikely that my film career was going to move beyond a certain level of role. And I was - because I had graphic instances of it - handicapped by the success of Star Trek. A director would say 'I don't want Jean-Luc Picard in my movie' - and this was compounded by X-Men as well.