Let's say [Warren Beatty] wants you to speak louder in a scene. He won't stop playing the role and say to you as a director, "Will you speak louder on the next take?" He'll say it as Howard Hughes: "I can't totally hear you. Why don't you speak up a little bit?" To kind of keep this rhythm going.

You do need these people to go out on a limb for you, thinking you're right for a role rather than having box office numbers.

Same with the Coen brothers and Warren [Beatty]. And then slowly you get to know each one of them as a person, and that becomes a kind of separate entity, where you just know the human being.

I honesty feel that each film has its own particular challenges.

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

By anyone's measure, [Warren Beatty] is proven himself. But he still sets out to make something as great as it possibly can be.

I had the opportunity to learn more about what life is like for a soldier [in The Yellow Birds].