[Howard Hughes ] approached filmmaking like he approached all of his inventiveness - it gave him an opportunity to make a name for himself in the world.

Some movies, I think, present ideas of the world that just don't help people with their lives. They just present things that are fleeting or stupid. So that's what I'm careful about - making sure I'm part of something that is saying something that I think is valuable in the world of people, not necessarily in the world of art.

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.

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.

What's exciting to me now is the idea in participating in a landscape of moviemaking that's completely different - the way you can make a movie with a 5D or something and what's going to come out of that. Especially the generation under us who grew up with the internet. When they are making films in the next ten years, they're gonna be so different from what we've seen before because their whole worldview is so different.

Elia Kazan - the films he made were such a big deal for me when I was growing up.

I've had that experience many, many, times - when you don't get roles. I'd developed a good muscle for shaking it off.