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.

That's something that Francis [Ford Coppola] would always say. I remember when I was doing Tetro, he said, "Stay innocent. I'm 69 years old, and I'm still innocent."

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.

You need those people to also have power and authority, and in a way that has been the story of my career.

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.

Whenever you hear somebody else is auditioning for something, you sort of assume they're going to get it. You should try to just ignore it. I don't find it very helpful to know who else is going up for stuff, generally.

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.