Often times it’s really hard for me to articulate why I connect to something.
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.
When you have the opportunity to choose projects, inevitably you start being moved towards the things that you’re moved by, right? And that changes over time, as we change, right?