My past is not pleasant; I grew up in a very tough town, Waterbury, Connecticut. I grew up in New York, too, but Waterbury was tougher.

I believe that Ryan Murphy is a genius. His instincts remind me of Andy Warhol. I recently went to the Warhol museum in Pittsburgh, and you can see a lot of echoes of Andy in Ryan’s work. Like Andy, Ryan’s finger is so on the pulse of culture that he’s ahead of culture. Their aesthetic and their vision of the world are very similar.

I think the most important thing for an actor is to stay current and stay relevant, and those are probably the hardest things to do.

Much of the time, as an actor, you sit around waiting. Most of your life and career, you’re waiting for your agent or your manager to call you.

In the consciousness of the end is the limitation of the moment.

Once you understand that someone has Tourette and that they can't help their tics, it takes away the distraction. And you can engage your compassion. You feel for them. You embrace them.

You never want to have a movie be derivative, because that's the worst if you ask me. I always want to be in original material, or an original idea, or an original vision, rather than a rehash of some other movie.