Cry Baby (1990) by John Waters
"At the end of my three years contract with the TV show "21 Jump Street", all the scripts I received were tame and uninteresting. I forced myself to wait patiently, until the day when John Waters phoned me. He was planing to make a movie in which he could ridicule the image of a teen idol. It was, for me, a gift, like a present fallen from the sky, the dreamed occasion to finally destroy the unreal image which was mine and to which I felt totally a prisoner. Cry Baby was a kind of beginning. It was from this movie that I swore to myself to do just what I wanted to do."

Edward Scissorhands (1990) by Tim Burton
"He's a character that I deeply understood. Still now, I miss Edward. I remember the last time in makeup, I really had the feeling that I was leaving somebody. Somebody who was very close to me."

Arizona Dream (1992) by Emir Kusturica
"In the same time, a dream and an apprenticeship. The feeling that I was discovering something new and original. With Kusturica, the possibilities are boundless. You really can take the liberty of doing anything you like. You can try and dare anything, without any barriers. With him, I discovered freedom. Freedom in the way of making a film. A very, very great experience. Strangely, the first time we met each other, Emir and I, we hated each other. Then, we met each other again, and gradually, we liked each other. The fact remains that, during all the shooting, we were unbelievably close. It was as if I had found a lost brother. Since, we have always been in touch. This morning, I had a message from him on my answering machine."

What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993) by Lasse Hallström
"On the Arizona Dream shoot, I was on a cloud and this feeling of freedom and lightness didn't leave me when I shot Benny and Joon after. On the other hand, What's eating Gilbert Grape was a difficult experience. First, I was passing through a very dark period in my personal life; then, the character was, in a way, pretty close to what I had lived in my adolescence, and it was pretty hard to live. It's certainly a good movie, but the memory I have about it, isn't very happy. The feeling that I was struggling to keep, at all costs, my head out of the water."

Ed Wood (1994) by Tim Burton
"Ed Wood was an extraordinary character. A cannonball, a lightning strength coming, from the darkness and rushing at full speed toward the light to the point of burning itself. I loved portraying this guy who sees everybody getting into a panic around him, and has just a thought: "I don't give a shit." For the Gilbert Grape release, I had come to Paris and lived in the Ritz hotel. I got ready in the same time for Ed Wood and so, I experimented with how it was to live and sleep with woman's underwears: panties, underskirt, high heels. One morning, I wake up and I phone the room-service and ordered a coffee. I hang up and go back to half sleep. Five minutes later, a waiter rings at the door. I'm going to open and I see a guy who looks ghastly at seeing me: I've realized that I was stripped to the waist, I wore a silk underskirt and high heels shoes! The guy was very uncomfortable, he laid the tray down and ran away trying to act as if he had seen nothing…"

Don Juan DeMarco (1995) by Jeremy Leven
"My meeting with Brando. A very important moment. To have opportunity to work with him… Incredible luck. Marlon Brando was one of the most important teachers in my life. The movie itself was also an interesting project. It was the chance to play with this idea of sex-symbol, of "best lover in the world", of the fact that appearance isn't necessarily reality, of fancy, of madnesss, of what is normal and what isn't. What is the exact definition of normal?"

Dead Man (1995) by Jim Jarmusch
"Dead Man was an idea that Jim had for a long time, but he had never worked it out. Jim and I, we were friends for three or four years at this time, and one day, he tells me: "Why shouldn't we try to do this thing together?"' I said: "OK, I'll follow you." So, I was involved even before the script was written. An extraordinary script. During shooting, it was sometime a little strained. It's strange to work together when you are the best friends in the world and when, suddenly, the other begins to tell you what you must do. I sometime reacted a little hard: " Hey, guy, who do you think you are talking to me like that? " But finally, I think this tenseness created the movie."

Nick of Time (1996) by John Badham
"I wanted to work with Christopher Walken. He is fascinating. He's this kind of person you can watch for hours without ever really understanding him. Walken is a mystery. I loved to work with him, but the mystery is still intact. Besides, I don't know if anybody can say who Christopher Walken really is."

The Brave (1996) by Johnny Depp
"Oh, my god, this movie has nearly made me sink… It's a project in which I totally involved myself, in a very personal and even intimate way. It was the chance for me to talk about things that I really cared in my heart of hearts: this deplorable condition in which the American Indian really lives, and broadly speaking, all people who have dark skin: black people, Mexicans, Indians… I felt very concerned about all that, and I wanted to express it through a movie. It was a learning experience and a testing experience. You wake up one day, and you realize that you have bet everything _ really everything _ on a project, and you must see it through to the bitter end. I tried to do something honest, not to imitate any existing model, certainly not to try to get entertainment from it. I took much full in the face but it was worth the trouble."

Donnie Brasco (1996) by Mike Newell
"It was great meeting Joe Pistone, the FBI official I played in the movie. It was unbelievable to meet these cops and these gangsters and to become their friend. I was pals with the "good guys" and the "bad guys". And honestly, I thought they weren't so different. And besides, of course, it was fantastic working with Al Pacino. I expected to meet an intense guy, very serious, very concentrating. I realized that, not only he's capable of laughing and fooling around, but he's also one of the funniest people I ever met. He's hilarious, hysterically funny."

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) by Terry Gilliam
"Fear and loathing in Las Vegas" is one of my favorite books; I've admired Hunter S. Thompson for many years. During the Donnie Brasco shooting, I receive a phone call at 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. It was Hunter: "Would you like to play my character in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?" I answer: "I'd love that!" He just tells me: "Ok, ok", and he hangs up. And I didn't heard from him again for a year. Terry, I had knew of him since Monty Python. I had met him in Cannes a few years ago, and I had thought it would be really great to work with him. It was. We were exactly on the same wavelength."

The Ninth Gate (1999) by Roman Polanski
"Polanski is the author of some movies which are near to perfection. "Chinatown", there's nothing to change, not one image. He's a really interesting guy, apart from all the drama which happened in his life. He's smart, funny, educated, a little crazy, but in a good way. We are very different from each other, and there were sometimes tension; but, on the whole, it went very smoothly."

Sleepy Hollow (1999) by Tim Burton
"Scott Rudin, the producer, calls me: "I'm going to send you a script, read it." I call him back the next day: "It's great but there is no chance that Paramount will agree to give me the part". I am bound to say that my last movies had been commercial failures and I was far from being a safe value. He tells me: "Don't worry about that, I'll see to it." Then, Tim called me in his turn, and even before he had finished his sentence, I told him: "When is it? Where is it?" And that's that. The fact that Tim wants to work with me again, I felt flattered. It's our third movie together and, everytime, it's a delight. The more time passes, the more we understand each other without talking."

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