It's much easier to work with an unknown.

I'm not in front of the camera, they are. I encourage them; I build up as much of their confidence and ego as possible. They've got to take control; I can't act it out.

You'd be surprised how many movie stars still care about the work.

When Ray Charles is concentrating he's like a piece of granite, nothing twitches, nothing, ... He sat for 25 minutes solid like that, like a stone, and I thought, 'Oh my God, if he doesn't like it I'm dead.' ... And then finally, after 25 minutes he started to talk back to the screen. I heard him say 'That's right. That's the truth.'

When you're working in Hollywood you have these actors who go to their trailers, they're getting paid millions of dollars, they act like spoiled children. They don't really want to work. And the crew knows that. They don't respect them, ... Jamie Foxx is the antithesis of that.

I trusted my instincts here, but I'm not stupid. The next thing I did was throw him into the shark tank, ... I threw him in with Ray Charles.