"One of the pillars of 'Cyrano' is recreating a love story and, like any archetype, these great stories tend to be captivating, among other things, because they are made of those universal things that move us."
"I believe in the will. I believe in discipline. I believe in the organization. I believe in the rigor that gives us work. I believe in love as an engine of all things. I believe in the light. I believe in God. I believe in kindness."
"Who said that being Latino is to be a stereotype? Characters are stereotypes when making plans or without shades. I do not believe in the picture or model established in the movies."
"I have a deep fascination with human nature, with all its virtues and all its defects."
"I think that, in the end, the military behavior and intelligence services are not very different from each other. It's an attitude of hunters; they're observing the prey."
"For me, no ideological or political conviction would justify the sacrifice of a human life. For me, the value of life is absolute, with no concessions. It's not negotiable."
"We all have very personal relationships to what happened on 9/11 and the events after tracking Osama bin Laden. Nobody can escape from the influence of that."
"My father was a military attache, so I've been traveling all my life."
"I've never lived in an English-speaking country, ever, but I lived in Austria. So, my second language is German. And when I went to school, I had a lot of classes in English."
"I come from Venezuela, from the independent film arena, and you work with one camera."
"I'm acting for the same reasons I wanted to become a diplomat. I've thought about it a lot and concluded that I wanted to become a diplomat because it was a way to explore human nature. For the same reason that at one point in college, I wanted to be a sociologist."
"I majored in political communications, so I intended to be a diplomat."
"I think there's no creative process that goes without injuries and scratches and punches. You get beat up somehow, and that's part of the commitment. You have to be open to that."
"In order to understand the mindset of a boxer, I needed to become a boxer myself."
"My father was military, so I traveled a lot, so I had 13 to 15 first days in new schools. Bullies transcend culture, unfortunately, and I had to deal with them wherever I went. I knew how to defend myself. But I didn't know how to fight."
"Panamanian boxing is unique - it's very musical. It's almost like a dance. It has a lot to do with being in the Caribbean and with salsa. When you see a Panamanian boxer, there's a style. There's a playfulness in the way you throw the punches."
"Boxing is all about how cool and controlled and clear your mind is. Violence only gets in the way of you winning a fight. It's a sport that's more about the strategy than anything. You lose or you win in your head."
"To portray not only a boxer but a boxer like Roberto Duran, I needed to understand all the difficulties and the pressures of the sport itself."
"If my subject is alive and is willing to talk to me, I will do it. But I always try to find people who were close, like lovers and family members and work colleagues - because we are what we think we are, but we're also the perception that others have of us. The truth is a sphere. There's always a hidden face."
"Duran is a mythological figure in Latin America. He grew up in a time of turbulence because Panama was basically occupied by the United States. So he felt obliged to fight Americans in the ring. He felt the whole pride of his country and the need for cultural and political emancipation in his hands."
"Everything goes in waves. Evolution goes in waves. The ocean goes in waves. Energy goes in waves. Sound travels in waves."
"I'm not an aggressive person at all. But I know how to fight."
"If you get conquered by ego, then you are losing the fight."
"I remember I would always joke among my friends about a remake of 'Point Break'. I would say, 'You know what? Whenever there's a remake of 'Point Break', I'm going to do it.'"
"I remember when I first met Katherine Bigelow for 'Zero Dark Thirty' - actually, we met for another movie, and that never got made, and then she called me and invited me to 'Zero Dark Thirty'."
