We all have a dark side. Most of us go through life avoiding direct confrontation with that aspect of ourselves, which I call the shadow self. Theres a reason why. It carries a great deal of energy.

You can't play history and you can't play historical characters. You just have to reduce it to the ordinary.

It is the ordinariness of us that is the same in all of us.

The ordinary is ultimately what moves us most deeply. It's what touches us, and it's what we most recognize, in great moments of art.

We actors are superstitious creatures. We do all the homework and we put all of the components together, but there's always one key aspect that we're not in charge of, really, and that's magic. You are always on the lookout for where and how that magic is going to ignite. When you have worked as much as I have and have sought it out as often as I do, you get very clear that it will come at very, very odd, unexpected moments.

When you're playing a real character, you want to honor that person and receive inspiration from that person. They need to anoint you in some way that allows you to borrow just a small piece of their soul. That is the flame.

We all have a dark side. Most of us go through life avoiding direct confrontation with that aspect of ourselves, which I call the shadow self. Theres a reason why. It carries a great deal of energy.