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That film was called The Professional, or Leon in Europe.

And today, 20 years and 35 films later, it is still the film people approach me about the most to tell me how much they loved it, how much it moved them, how it’s their favorite movie.

I feel lucky that my first experience of releasing a film was initially such a disaster by all standard measures.

I learned early that my meaning had to be from the experience of making the film and the possibility of connecting with individuals rather than the foremost trophies in my industry:

financial and critical success.

And also those initial reactions could be false predictors of your work’s ultimate legacy.

I started choosing only jobs I was passionate about and from which I knew I could glean meaningful experiences.

This thoroughly confused everyone around me: agents, producers, and audiences alike.

I made Gotya’s Ghost, a foreign independent film and study our history visiting the Prado everyday for 4 months as I read about Goya and the Spanish Inquisition.

I made V for Vendetta, studio action movie for which I learned everything I could about freedom fighters whom otherwise may be called terrorists.

From Menachem Begin to The Weather Underground, I made Your Highness, a pothead comedy with Danny McBride and laughed for 3 months straight.

I was able to own my meaning and not have it be determined by box office receipts or prestige.

By the time I got to making Black Swan, the experience was entirely my own.

I felt immune to the worst things anyone could say or write about me, and to whether an audience felt like going to see my movie or not.

It was instructive for me to see that ballet dancers — for ballet dancers once your technique gets to a certain level, the only thing that separates you from others is your quirks or even flaws.

One ballerina was famous for how she turned slightly off balanced.

You can never be the best, technically.

Someone will always have a higher jump or a more beautiful line.

The only thing you can be the best at is developing your own self.

Authoring your own experience was very much what Black Swan itself was about.

I worked with Darren Aronofsky, the film’s director, who changed my last line in the movie to: it was perfect.

My character Nina is only artistically successful when she finds perfection and pleasure for herself not when she was trying to be perfect in the eyes of others.

So when Black Swan was successful financially and I began receiving accolades, I felt honored and grateful to have connected with people.

But the true core of my meaning, I had already established.

And I needed it to be independent of people’s reactions to me.

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