What Drives The Stars of Sundance 2018?

“What Drives You?” It was the question we posed to each of the actors and filmmakers that passed through our Sundance Studio at this year’s festival, which ended over the weekend. And we got a variety of answers, from the simple to the complex, from the serious to the silly.

Tony Gilroy, who premiered the excellent thriller Beirut, just wants to stick around, he told us. “I want to keep making things. I just want to be completely occupied with something that’s obsessing me. It doesn’t matter to me what it is.” Nicolas Cage, there with Mandy, echoed the survival sensibility. “I often use the word ‘alchemy’; to take something that could be negative and self-destructive and transmute it into something that is positive and constructive,” he added.

For Priyanka Chopra, who stars in A Kid Like Jake, it is about seeing parts written for actors like her. “To actually fight that fight for the next generation that comes in, and to break that concrete. For me, that’s a huge, huge drive, to just normalize being who I am and what I look like.” Jane Fonda told us her goal was to give a cultural face to older women. “I’m fulfilling the dream I had when I was middle-aged,” she said.

And then there was Nick Offerman… For his hilarious response, and to hear from the likes of Carey Mulligan, Idris Elba, Debra Messing, Elle Fanning, Gus Van Sant and many more, check out the video above.

Here’s a complete list of the actors, directors and stars featured in our supercut, with links to our coverage of their films in the festival:

Interviews by Anthony D’Alessandro, Joe Utichi, Dominic Patten, Amanda N’Duka and Matt Grobar. Videos were shot and edited by David Janove and Andrew Merrill. The Deadline Studio is presented by Hyundai. Special thanks to Calii Love.