Often times it’s really hard for me to articulate why I connect to something.
My mum raised us on classic movies and a lot of musical theatre.
In a perfect world, I would love to do one play for every three movies.
I admire actors and artists who devote just as much time to their life as they do to their work.
I like that when you create you really do create with a very small group of people, and in that space, before it goes out to all these people, that’s what I love.
I started to realize I love study, I love the study of human behavior.
There are lines that just stick with me, like I mean I still can remember it’s like every line that I say from Nightcrawler, I mean it’s just always there.
I love artists. I love watching other people work.
To me I just, I’m a geek when it comes to cinematographers. And when it comes to Robert and when it comes to someone like Roger Deakins who shot Prisoners and he shot Jarhead.
I have a profound respect for cinematographers. That is my secret sauce. Like they are everything to me.
I always find you go back to an animal; it will always show you the sort of primal aspects of behavior. You always know how to respond if you choose that.
By cool, I don’t mean cool. I mean vulnerable and a mess.
Other people’s belief changes you. We all have insecurity, and uncertainty, and to have that glow cast over you by somebody that you respect, makes a gigantic difference.
People say to me, well “What’s the character you really want to play?” And I go, I don’t know.
I don’t have a “I want to play this or that,” I just don’t have that. I’ve never been like that.
I think I’m not in this work to not look at life as it is. I’m not in it to say, “I want to wear a mask and escape,” you know. I want to know what’s happening in the world, and I want to have it touch me in a way that I can do something, my little part like that, and have it somehow translate.
I was working with Michael Shannon and I was like, “Oh man I’m having trouble with this scene.” And he’s like, “Well, then just open it up.” I was like, “But, the mark?” And I was like, what’s wrong with me? And he was like, “Dude, what’s wrong with you?”
I didn’t know many classes where I could try and relate the thing that I really loved and wanted to do into an intellectual idea.
There are standards. I like to be prepared, I guess I should say – that type of pressure of, “All right, now you go with abandon,” you know. Now when you’re in it, you let go of all the things – that’s what happens when you’re onstage.
Not to say that you should be constantly trying to change the world, but I think it’s important to know that whatever we do has an implication and has an effect, and because of that it is political.