I like it when the deeper you go with the character, the more you see the layers start to peel away.

There are things you do for the fun of doing them or to work or to hang with certain people. But the projects that I've invested myself in and cared about most deeply have absolutely been activated by a desire to chase something that I relate to, or that I see as having the potential to speak to someone else directly.

I'm a Tulsa Jew and I have a religious upbringing.

When I think of my background, if I was privileged on any level, it was in terms of the kind of exposure to experience and bohe-mian cultural influence that my parents and my uncles and my grandfather gave me. On both sides I come from an extremely eccentric, artsy, intellectually intense, activist family.

People say you can't make movies about your politics or the environment. And, generally speaking, I completely divide those sides of my brain.

Well, I don't feel that I've played so many bad guys, and I'm rot really drawn to villains per se. I think a lot of people relate to some of my characters' inner struggles.

I read a lot of scripts and so many are clearly a knockoff of one familiar genre or another.