JEAN RENO
Much lighter as a physical presence than he seems onscreen. I mention to him that his role in Jet Lag, as a harried chef on the verge of a big business deal, is the sort of role Daniel Auteuil plays all the time. "Daniel could play it, but he's a little short to play opposite Juliette (Binoche) in this film. The character needs to be taller. It took us a while to work it out. Juliette started the film wearing tennis shoes, but after looking at a take she realized she had to be taller."

LEELEE SOBIESKI
Speaking of actors and height - damn, she's tall. The 20-year-old star of Joy Ride, L'Idole and My First Mister is about 5-foot-10, which is tall for an actor of either gender, and seems more so after seeing Salma Hayek in an elevator. "I just fell in love for the first time,"says Sobieski. "My boyfriend's 6-foot-5." I wonder if she's considered retiring and breeding basketball players?

LYNNE RAMSAY
Director of Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar, on directing Samantha Morton in the latter film: "She's not like a performer. She reminds me of Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion, someone who exists without a back story. It's interesting to work with an actor who doesn't seem to analyze the character. I think I pissed her off - normally I don't think she needs direction."

JAMES SPADER
At 10 am, tired from shooting The Pentagon Papers here in Toronto until 4 am. On playing a character, the lawyer in Secretary, who has no back story: "There was no information or background in the screenplay. I didn't get a pamphlet before we shot. I never knew who the guy was. When the film visits his house about halfway into the film, that was the first time I'd seen the place. That house told me a little bit about the character."

GUS VAN SANT
On his apparent impulse toward career suicide, following every success with some monumentally weird project - My Own Private Idaho with Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, Good Will Hunting with the "shot-for-shot remake" of Psycho, Finding Forrester with his latest, Gerry, which is basically about Matt Damon and Casey Affleck getting lost in the desert and walking a lot: "Even Cowgirls Get The Blues wasn't the weird project. My Own Private Idaho, following the success of Drugstore Cowboy, was the weird project. No one understood why I wanted to make it. Fortunately, it was embraced."