Quotes

I'm pretty convinced there's a chemical reality to who I am, regarding my brain, that makes me kind of a strange guy. And there's the behavioral component of growing up in a house where my dad would lose his temper a lot and my mother has a little bit of a hypochondriac streak. It doesn't take a genius to see the writing on the wall. I'm fundamentally a pretty neurotic guy, but I've come to terms with that.

I always remember responding very emotionally to film. I had a lot of lonely time on my hands because I wasn't really the best-looking kid in my town and I sort of pined after girls. I had to sort of immerse myself in the arts because girls weren't particularly interested in me.

There's no doubt that there's certain songs and arrangements of music that release a chemical reaction in my brain. This sounds a little goofy, but I really believe that. It's such a euphoric experience that I sort of want to chase that experience as often as possible. And it's also that set of chemical circumstances in my brain that makes me fucked up. So, you know, you take the good with the bad.

[on the rumored appearance of Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator Renaissance (2009)] Our big contribution to visual effects is, for our movie, a certain actor as he looked in his mid-thirties. I challenged [Charles Gibson] and ILM to do something we haven't seen before and it's that actor, photo-realistic in our film.

[on Christian Bale] Christian's a good guy. Don't accuse him of being a bad guy because he's not. He loves his family, he has no entourage, he's an actor's actor and he operates from a place of passion.

[on his inspiration for Terminator Renaissance (2009)] I regard the late 1970s and early 1980s as the golden age of science fiction filmmaking with movies like Alien, le 8ème passager (1979), Blade Runner (1982) and Terminator (1984) and I wanted to honour that golden age.

Before you can be Johnny Depp, you have to do your time on 21 Jump Street

It's fun to hate a guy called McG. In my humble opinion it's sheer fucking lunacy because it's just short for McGinty - fucking get past it. My name is Joseph McGinty Nichol. My mother's maiden name is McGinty. My uncle was Joe, my grandfather was Joe. I was called McG since the day I was born because we were broke and there were three Joes in the house. There's no Hollywood, 'I think I'll give myself a nickname' bullshit. It just is. And at some point I would be a sell-out punk if I rolled over and said, 'Well, call me Joe.' And I've had to suffer through teachers in the third grade saying, 'Look, no vowels!' And I suffer a bit for it now. I can only sigh and move forward.

I don't think there's been a film I've made where there hasn't been some kind of physical fight. I mean, I've been headbutted by an A-list star. Square in the head. An inch later and my nose would have been obliterated... It was Bill Murray. Y'know, it's a passionate industry.