That is sort of the eternal question for people who go to Hollywood...what will be the straw that breaks the camel's back, and forces you to think about doing something else? When do you throw in the towel?

I'm kind of grateful that I didn't have any real success until I was older and basically out of high school. I think that was a real confidence boost for me, having it all start that way, in that very privileged position of having him vouch for me.

That was cool, because they've all [ George Clooney and Josh Brolin and Scarlett Johansson] worked with the Coens. They were much more at ease with them at the outset, and they were all kind of familiar with the shorthand that the Coens had.

[Woody Allen] does very few takes, and he doesn't give a whole ton of directions, although he does give direction.

Howard Hughes innovation was in the aviation field. His designs and spirit of experimentation was at the forefront. As far as his work as film producer, he certainly went after a bigger and more ambitious kind of filmmaking, even if he wasn't necessarily a cinema artist.

I remember calling and asking, because I had a few lines that were like, "How could the character have done this?" and I hadn't read the part of the script that said what she [ Cate Blanchett] did, so they put me on the phone with Woody... Allen. I don't know if I could really say "Woody."

[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.