Each film and each character is a completely new set of challenges. It doesn't feel like you can rest on something you may have done well in the past.

Each time demands its own kind of film.

You do need these people to go out on a limb for you, thinking you're right for a role rather than having box office numbers.

I had four years of auditions, and nothing happened, until Francis Ford Coppola took a shot on me ['Tetro' in 2009]. I hadn't done a film, and suddenly I was the lead.

I think you always feel like you're about a hair's breadth away from being a bad actor anyway... It's not too hard to let the rope go slack, so to speak.

When I was a little kid, my parents would show me Marx Brothers films and westerns and stuff like that. Thats where all my desire to be an actor comes from and probably most of my understanding of acting comes from for sure.

I remember calling and asking, because I had a few lines that were like, "How could the character have done this?" and I hadn't read the part of the script that said what she [ Cate Blanchett] did, so they put me on the phone with Woody... Allen. I don't know if I could really say "Woody."