[ The Finest Hours] reminded me a lot of a film I did called Unstoppable in that you have a driving thriller aspect of the film and it's not all that complicated of a story and there's a simple elegance to it. I liked that. It is also driven by a really strong romance and ordinary men doing extraordinary things. I love that.

I love the stories that have come before, that we know of. I think for me it's always more interesting to start from square one and you take the fundamental pillars of the character and, around that, try to create something new and different.

Dating someone on the opposite end of the happy spectrum teaches you an incredible amount of patience.

I took part in a theatre festival in Massachusetts two summers after I graduated from college. Then I was in Los Angeles thinking: "I'm going to go to New York." I'd decided that I would not have a chance of a film career, so I was about to make the move. I bought a plane ticket and found a place to live in New York, packed my bags and of course the universe "told me" that I was not meant to go. Suddenly, a week before I was supposed to leave, I had three job offers and one of them was my first movie.

I think it's a very healthy thing to learn from what's happened in the past. But only if you look at what happened and think, 'How could I have dealt with that differently?' Then let it go.

My fans have designated themselves the, uh, 'Pine Nuts.' They're a nutty bunch.

Maybe the realisation of the full human potential is the utopian thing. Maybe that is our collective struggle, is to find a way to get there. But right now it seems like we're duplicating what was written in the Bible, a millennium ago, which is "An eye for an eye." Revenge policy; "If you hit me, we'll hit you back worse"; ad infinitum.