How are getting on with parenthood?
I was making two or three films a year and I have a baby now that I want to see grow up, so I won't be making three films a year. My wife Jennifer (Connelly) went to make a movie in Canada, Dark Water, and I went with her to be set bitch. It turned out to be a marvellous thing to be, because you get all the free meals and all of the free coffee and none of the pressure. And you get to play with the kid all day long.
What is the greatest part about being a father?
Everybody feels that their children are entirely unique. It's been the most exasperating and wonderful challenge that I've ever had in my life. It's been really remarkable. There's lots of surprising things, like you find reserves of patience that you thought you never had. Everybody tells you about sleepless nights, but nobody warns you about the germ warfare, that you'll get ill and everybody passes the illness on and you catch it off the kid again. It's a disaster. The most surprising thing was that when I spent 12 hours in a trailer in Toronto, where it was colder than Mars, with a three-month-old baby, while my wife was shooting Dark Water, I forgot how to speak grown-up. My wife would come home and want to speak with me and I'd have no notion of how to do it. She would come home after a hard day and I would realise I'd have to comfort her and I'd have the impulse to sing The Wheels On The Bus Go Round And Round. You really need to make time with a grown-up like your wife.
You're a big star now and you don't have to change your kid's diapers, so why do you?
Fathers usually don't have breasts, so it's difficult to bond with the child without breasts, so I have discovered you have to bond through poo-poo. I've done a lot of nappy changing and I think you have to make peace with poo. You'll never look at mustard the same way.
Did you enjoy shooting Wimbledon back home in England?
I have a green card and we tend to split our time pretty evenly. I have very close friends that I miss in England. When I walk down the street in London I bump into people that I know and go for a coffee. It's very difficult when you move to a new country. If you get on a plane from New York and you fly for five hours, you're in Los Angeles. If you get on a plane in London and fly for five hours, you're in Morocco. The greatest thing about London is Paris is very close. If you do have money you can have your children in a different culture like that (snaps his fingers), every weekend if you want. I really miss that feeling of adventure, going somewhere where I don't understand what's being said to me.
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