Somebody comes to your house. You know they're coming, so it's not a surprise. And they give you an envelope that has your scenes in it. And they sit in the car outside for a half an hour while you read your scenes, then they ring your doorbell and you give your scenes back. Then you shoot the movie a few weeks later or something. The next time you see your scenes is the night before you start shooting. I never read the script [Blue Jasmine], so I didn't really know what it was about.

Even when Warren [Beatty] cast me, it had been two years between films at that point.

I remember pretending to be the characters in the movies when I was a little kid.

I've definitely been spoilt. Every movie I've done, it's always the same criteria: finding a great story, and finding a great part to play.

When Tetro came out, I met with Warren Beatty for the first time. I had, like, a four-and-a-half-hour lunch with him, and then over the next five years continued to meet with him and go to his house.

I auditioned for four or five years and didn't get anything after that.

I talked to Woody Allen for half an hour or something. It was pretty incredible. He really went into lots of detail about the story [in Blue Jasmin] and what actually happened. Just talking to him is very surreal.