It feels like you're being invited into a kind of community [working with the Coen brothers].

That's a lot more legitimate than the retail therapy I do.

When I worked with anybody like Woody Allen, there's the name, and your understanding of who they are before you meet them, that stays in your head a little bit.

For me, each one of those experiences stands on its own. The first one was with Steven Spielberg, who helped me to get an agent and vouch for me, and that gave me the confidence to continue.

I'm glad to be an actor to be employed by people who are now 12, probably. I look forward to that.

Woody Allen is kind of the one example I don't have. Because the way he works and the amount of shooting time that I did on that film, I didn't really get to know him, so he kind of stays as "Woody Allen" to me.

I had four years of auditions, and nothing happened, until Francis Ford Coppola took a shot on me ['Tetro' in 2009]. I hadn't done a film, and suddenly I was the lead.