I always work with refugees and I think they are the most amazing people and it's a privilege to spend time with them, so I will always.

I think I was probably able to flip characters in my head as if I was playing different roles in order to write the different people because you kind of have to be one person, and inhabit him and write from his voice and be her and write her voice. So I think that helped.

I think actors, because we're in the world of the characters and the movie, are more isolated, and it always really fun to wake up and be a family with the entire crew.

To be put simply refugees are us. And their mothers are like us, they love their children the same, they laugh, they dream, and they are survivors, they are amazing.

Artists raise their kids differently. We communicate to the point where we probably annoy our children. We have art around the house, we have books, we go to plays, we talk. Our focus is art and painting and dress-up and singing. It's what we love. So I think you can see how artists in some way raise other artists.

The interesting thing for me is that everybody felt that I was really wild when i was unbalanced and desperate to communicate something and didn't have a sense of purpose. But I've never been so crazy and wild as I am with my son or as I am now.

I learned a lot from Clint [Eastwood], who's an extremely economic director. I learned a lot from Michael Winterbottom, who really gave a lot of trust in the actors and allowed them to live in the space instead of trying to manipulate and make it too set and too staged. Working with [Robert] De Niro taught me a lot of being an actors' director and what that is. I've learned a lot from pretty much everybody. Hopefully I've picked up something from everybody I've worked with.