Acting is like music and you improvise. It's like jazz, there's no rhyme or reason to it. It's not a plan. You practice to music and you just play it.

When you make a movie it's always interesting, because you end up in places you never would as a normal visitor or tourist.

[Russel Crowe] has been through a lot and had a lot of success. No one knew who he was when I worked with him 12 years ago. He's just come off a great film in Australia- Romper Stomper - and so it was good to see him again. Obviously, I'd seen him since.

[Having monologue] are talking to somebody even if it's just to yourself, convince yourself if that's what you're trying to do.

I've always felt protected. That's the God's honest truth.

I'm selfish, I think. I think an artist has to be. I'm not worried about what people think. I play the parts that I find interesting. It'd bother me more to be just pigeonholed into doing what people think is ethical or that's boring to me. I don't pick parts with that in mind, I just find interesting stories. If it's interesting to me, then I do it.

Meryl and Katharine Hepburn are probably the two greatest actresses of this and the last century.