The story of Ray Charles is the world underestimating him. ... Everyone ultimately kept saying [to him] ... you really shouldn't be able to do anything because you're a cripple,

The SAS is the most elite of the special forces in the world. They are not people who go out and advertise; they keep it inside. They don't want anybody to know about them.

When Ray Charles is concentrating he's like a piece of granite, nothing twitches, nothing, ... He sat for 25 minutes solid like that, like a stone, and I thought, 'Oh my God, if he doesn't like it I'm dead.' ... And then finally, after 25 minutes he started to talk back to the screen. I heard him say 'That's right. That's the truth.'

When you're working in Hollywood you have these actors who go to their trailers, they're getting paid millions of dollars, they act like spoiled children. They don't really want to work. And the crew knows that. They don't respect them, ... Jamie Foxx is the antithesis of that.

I trusted my instincts here, but I'm not stupid. The next thing I did was throw him into the shark tank, ... I threw him in with Ray Charles.

If you are making a film about a very famous individual you live or die by the person that's going to play the main role, ... In this film I'm in big trouble because everyone knows what Ray Charles looks like. Everyone knows his movements, everyone knows his vocal patterns.