Ask Anything: The Year in Movieline Interviews

Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Dec. 9)

On Modern Family's handling of homosexuality: There's this great episode that actually really hit close to the heart for me. We deal with my dad's uncomfortability with my character's sexuality. Ed O'Neill's character ends up introducing Cameron to his friends as "a friend of my son, Mitchell's." And I get really upset about it, naturally and say, "You would never introduce Phil as a friend of Claire's." It kind of opens up this can of worms between him and me and how much support he really offers me. It ends up being very moving and very touching. Obviously, through the eyes of Chris Lloyd and Steve Levitan and the writer of that episode, it is handled with such care and humor. It actually made me tear up when I read it. Especially in this era of marriage equality, it gave a simple, clear voice to a father and his son. And by the end of the episode, I think it might take a step towards changing a lot of people's minds on marriage and equality and how they view people that are different from them.

Jeff Bridges (Dec. 9)

On fatherly Oscar advice: My father, during my first Oscar nomination, my father came up to me -- and I was quite anxious. He said, 'Jeff, may I talk to you in private?' And I said, 'Yes.' He said, 'I want you to know that if you ride to the Oscars, a whole family in a Subaru, that they'll give you the Subaru free.' So I said, 'OK. I will do that. But I'm going to tape the entire thing with a video camera.' So we got in the Subaru, and it was like clowns, you know, getting out of a car. I taped the whole thing. God knows where that thing is, but that memory will always be stuck in my head."

Michael Haneke (Dec. 2)

On directing actors: First of all you have to win the trust of these people to give them the confidence. The moment you jeopardize this confidence, perhaps by saying something stupid to your actor, then you destroy this confidence. Because they smell it; they know it. It's a question of relation. [...] Every person is singular, so you have to feel where he is. My students ask me how to do it -- the biggest fear with students are the actors. They have no fear with the cameras, but when they confront an actor, they have no idea what to do or say. You have to have a good ear, in my opinion. When I worked in theater, I had a lot of little discussions with actors who complained, "You don't look at me!" Because I was sitting turned away and listening. And I said, "It's because I see you better that way." You just feel immediately if it's wrong. The most important thing for a director is a good ear.

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