In a movie, you work three months to tell a story that happens in two hours. In a Mexican soap opera, you work one day to make a story that's an hour and a half. So you can see the difference in the quality of the project.

I wasn't a fan of boxing, I was a fan of Julio Cesar Chavez. All of Mexico stopped to watch his fights. Old, young, left, right and centre.

Becoming a father is the biggest change you go through in life - at least that I've gone through in life.

I think film can change lives. Doing 'Milk' changed mine, for sure. When I see that someone like Harvey Milk changed his life and the lives of many others in just eight years, I feel powerful. I go out of the cinema saying, 'Maybe there's something I can do, too.'

Everywhere you look, especially on TV, someone is promising to make you rich and famous.

I can sing 'Love Me Do,' very well.

You have to accept who you are in order to make someone happy and be happy.

You don't want everyone to know everything about you.

I don't want to do a history lesson. I don't think cinema should be about that. Cinema should be about emotions.

I wish parents at the end would think a little bit about how everything we do affects the lives of our kids and defines who they're going to be.

I was six when I started working in theater. I chose to be an adult before I should be.

My father had to play the role of mother and father.

I always wanted to be a futbol player, but I was never good enough.

Acting is therapy. It keeps you in contact with your feelings.

I always thought of documentaries as films through which you find your voice as a narrator.

It makes no sense that this country has 11 million workers feeding, building this country, making America what it is, and they don't share the same rights of those who are consuming the fruit of their labor.

Since 'Y Tu Mama Tambien,' I started to spend a lot of time in the United States, and my son was born there.

When you make a film, it's because it's important to you, it means something to you.

Before 'Y Tu Mama,' I did 16 movies that only my family got to see because I invited them to the premiere.

In Mexico, you need to be a bulldog to make a movie because everything is set up for you to go back home and get depressed and not do the movie.

In Mexico, we call it 'terco': the guy who goes out every day, and every day they tell him no, and the next day he's there, and the next day he's there. That's the kind of people who make movies in Mexico.

There's a reality that the market is changing, and the stories of the Latino community need to be out because there's a huge audience in need of films that would represent them.

My first son was born in Los Angeles; he's a Mexican-American.

No makeup can substitute for faces that have actually been under the sun.

Film can be a tool for change; it can start a debate.

I started to work when I was really young. For me, friendship is work, and work is friendship. Those who are next to me and that have been there for a long time are those who can work with me, play football with me, and go watch a film with me.

I'm a terrible dancer.

Everyone is different, and so I don't want to repeat anyone else's career. I want to do mine.

I want to see movies where I can relate to the guy.

In film, normally what happens is that not many people work more than once. Normally, it breaks couples. It doesn't make them.

I always wondered why there weren't any films about Cesar Chavez. There are movies about other civil rights leaders in this country, but why not Chavez?

The nice thing about my job is that it allows me to look deeper into issues and then tell stories with that information.

If your neighbor's reality changes, yours will change as well.

Acting is about communicating, reacting, and sharing - and friendship is about all of those things, too.

The beauty of football is that it's about 11, and another five, at least, are sitting outside. You cannot get competitive.

You see Mexican cinema in festivals throughout the world, and you see Mexican directors getting recognized at Cannes, at the Oscars, in Berlin, but the question is, What is the end result of that in terms of the market? That's where it's lacking.

When we started CANANA, I wasn't married, so I guess I was married to the idea of CANANA.

There's a lot of freedom to do anything you want in Mexico. It's just that that freedom belongs to a few. It's a huge country with a big contrast. There is this big inequality, so those like us that have the chance to do things, we know we are very lucky.

As an actor, you have to believe in the point of view of a director; as a director, you have to be able to express what your point of view is and invite everybody to join you on that journey. So it's always about opening up.

Boxing is about hunger.

When I was young, football and theatre were the only places I was happy. I remember school as just what happened in between the things that I liked.

I connect much more with theatre actors than with cinema actors - insofar as you can speak of 'cinema actors' in Mexico, because there isn't a big film industry.

I don't make films for myself; I make them in order to communicate with an audience.

Mexico is where I fell in love for the first time; it's where my family lives... so however much I travel, I inevitably return there.

I don't want to come and conquer American films or the American market. I just want to do movies that I care about, stories that I like.

My mother died when I was two years old; that's why I have so many daddy issues. And that's why my relationship with my dad is so strong.

Directors should be paid for promising impossible things.

Film is a tool of change.

I've gone across that border many times. My son was born in the United States; he is also a Mexican-American with the two passports.

California is one of the strongest states with one of the solidest economies but, at the same time, ignores the reality of its farm workers.