I don't plan in terms of career ambitions. The only career ambition I have is to work with people who are going to bring you up and elevate your performance. They'll let you know things that you didn't know already and bring you places that you might not have gotten to otherwise.

I'm aware now over the last 5 or 10 years that when you do an accent, you really have to kind of get down to the nitty gritty and go into the phonetics of it, if necessary. Find out not just the sounds but the rhythms and the music - or lack thereof - in a particular accent.

He earned every precious beautiful moment life gave back to him.

Once we start shooting, it's in there. You're trying to get into a place where you rise to the work, rather than make it manageable or make it work for you.

I think most people are decent people. I don't know if they could stand the pressure he's under, but most people aspire to be decent people.

I started hitching about the country when I was 16 or 17 years old. I found the music that was played around the country - Irish music - had a particular resonance.

We lost faith in authority in the '50s, up to a point, and we spawned a lot of anti-heroes in movies, which were refreshing and open. But at this point, with the distrust that's there and the disillusionment with leadership that is so acute, we need some kind of a focus on taking the irony out and taking the anti-hero element away.