Don't aspire to make a living, aspire to make a difference.

I didn't realise that Ridley Scott has never won an Academy Award.

I wasn't allowed to go to movies when I was kid; my father was a minister. 101 Dalmatians and King of Kings, that was the extent of it.

I try not to think about that [getting Oscar] ahead of time. You just try to do the best work you can, and then you get the movie out there, and we've been hearing good things. But you never know, you don't want to get too high, and you don't want to get too low.

You don't know when you're being watched. That's one of the weird things about celebrity. It's my least favorite part of acting, celebrity.

When you look in one direction where Troy's chair was, you could see out through the yard across the street, there was an old cork bar advertisement for five cents. We wanted it to feel like this was real life [in Fences] and that it extended blocks and blocks.

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.