I'm actually embarrassed to tell people I'm Russian these days, because it's become such an awful place.

I don't hang out at trendy Hollywood bars.

I think you can always find interesting, complex and fascinating characters to play in different kinds of movies. It's in your hands.

I'm trying to figure out what I can do creatively. It's about trying to find new things and trying to figure out voices and borrowing from things and learning as much as possible so that I have an archive of things to borrow from.

I want things to be characters and not me. Why would I want to play me?

Russia itself is an extremely complex country, and sometimes I feel like all of that comes back to haunt me. I can see why so many Russian writers were so tortured.

I've been lucky to be able to work with great people and on interesting material.