I got turned down for a million jobs until I got my first movie with Francis [Ford Coppola].

I had one line. My two larger scenes had gone fine, and then on that day I screwed up that line over and over and over again. And every time I screwed it up, they can't use the whole thing because they're only using the one shot [in Blue Jasmin]. That was my last day.

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

[The Yellow Birds] is based on a novel written by Kevin Powers, who is an Iraq War vet. I play a soldier who promises my friend's mother I'm going to keep him alive. But when we go overseas to Iraq, he gets killed. It's about what happened to him, my reckoning and dealing with that as I return home from the war.

Their way of working [the Coen brothers] is always kept pretty mysterious. I was so curious to see how they make these movies. It was just such a joy - they seem to have so much fun making their movies.

When I was 14 years old, I was by no means trying to work professionally at all.

I grew up watching a lot of old movies, so getting to ask about making movies in the '70s and people he was friends with, like Orson Welles, Lillian Hellman and Charlie Chaplin, and hearing a first-person account was pretty incredible.