(2011) I have a globe in my living room that I spend a lot of time spinning. It's how a lot of ideas for trips are born with me. I look and think, what do they do there? And I go. Sometimes a patch of land looks interesting, the tip of South America, or the northeast coast of Brazil or the Tuamotu islands. And I go.

(2011) I like to travel with a very loose outline, a starting point and a finishing spot...maybe pick a few places in between and leave the majority open. I bought a ticket into Cape Town, South Africa and ticket out of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, for eight weeks later. I gave myself only the rule of no air travel in between. That said, I like to know several things I'm going to want to do in the first few days of a trip, it helps ground me there and focus. Then I can begin to follow my nose...Another way I like to travel is to pursue a quest -- it gives focus to a trip that can prove really rewarding. I went to Tahiti with the intention of picking my own pearl from the sea. I met some really interesting people who were way off the normal circuit, and had a great sense of satisfaction and connection when I got it. It's a place I feel I know better now than had I just been traveling there.

(2011, on traveling) When it comes to where I stay, it's all location, location, location for me. Where I stay goes a long way toward dictating what kind of travel experience I'll have. I enjoy checking into a fancy hotel, but after I'm there a short while I begin to feel claustrophobic, so if I'm paying, I never do. It's a layer of insulation from the place I'm visiting that doesn't make sense to me. I came to see Rome, not the Hassler Hotel. And I was never the hostel guy. I like a bit of space and privacy - and my own shower. I walked across Spain once on the Camino de Santiago - probably the most important trip I ever took - and they had refugios, hostels, along the way. I really didn't enjoy them and found myself checking into small inns and guesthouses. I met fewer German walkers and more locals. But really, I love nothing more then spending the night in a tent in the mountains, I used to spend a lot of time in the Absaroka and Wind River ranges in Wyoming.

(2011) My trips aren't as long as they used to be. I won't leave my family for more then a week now, whereas I used to travel for a few months at a time when I was single. It's a different kind of travel now, but nothing I ever did alone can compare with seeing the joy of my son burying himself in the Sahara desert under a full moon, or my daughter touching the back of a stingray in Fakarava. Everyone in my family, myself included, is a much better version of themselves when we get far from home...I have to admit. I'm a solo traveler at heart.

(2011) I find I'm just a better version of myself when I travel. I feel my place in the world in a way that I understand more, I feel closer to my humanness, I like people better. I love to discover things. I never come back from a trip not feeling like I've grown at least a bit.

You always have to keep thinking: "Where am I going?" Whereas acting, you're always thinking: "What am I doing?" You don't want to know where you're going, you want to be right where you are.

In doing everything, from coming up with the ideas and putting them on paper till doing the final edits, you are always thinking the next three steps, you're always thinking what next, what next, what next?

I thought I understood the story very well, because I've lived with it for so long. But movies change and take on a life of their own once they start to be made, and you have to keep your eye on the real ball, not the ball that's in your head.