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.

Just getting to talk to that person [Woody Allen ] in real life was pretty wild.

With 'Hail, Caesar!' it was about all the skill sets I had to learn, but each movie requires a different way of working. You're a piece in a new world, and there is always a difficult part within that world. For me, it's not consistent from movie-to-movie, each film has a central challenge.

It was pretty fun [auditioning on the Millennium Falcon], because I enjoyed the material a lot. Last year I read for the directors, then came to England and did a test on the Falcon, then came back and did a couple more screen tests in Los Angeles.

When I worked with anybody like Woody Allen, there's the name, and your understanding of who they are before you meet them, that stays in your head a little bit.

[ Being director] is really reassuring to me that it's just about who is right for that role and less about if you ace the audition. It's just about getting to know people, not about who's a better actor a lot of the time. It's about who fits that particular suit, you know?

My parents weren't involved in show business but my parents would show me. We'd watch old films in the house.