If you're doing your job properly, you take the risk of feeling slightly foolish and delve in and bring out the emotions.

One of the places where we lived when I was growing up had this big wood out the back. And starting when I was about 8, I used to enjoy just walking alone through the wood late. Eleven p.m. Midnight. Later.

People always say, "What do you want to do next, what kind of movie do you want to do next?" And I say, "I wanna do whatever script that is the best one that comes my way." I certainly would never say, "Oh, I'm gonna do a Western next," and sit around waitin' for a Western to come along when there's some other genre's brilliant script sitting right there.

The blue collar milieu was something that I really understood and resonated with me and I thought was underrepresented in American cinema.

There are movies where actors aren't characters but movie stars, being cool beyond belief throughout the whole movie. That is what it is. And we reveal ourselves when we act, very often without noticing. But if I can manage to do a character without showing anything of myself, then that's the ultimate goal for me. No leakage.

You're creating a different world and the actor's job is to be able to convince the audience to enter into that world, whether it be actually something that you recognize from your own life or not.

You have to treat yourself like a mushroom to some degree, in order to keep on discovering things.