Every little thing that people know about you as a person impedes your ability to achieve that kind of terrific suspension of disbelief that happens when an audience goes with an actor and character he's playing.

I don't smoke and I don't want to smoke. I am not a fan of gratuitous smoking in films.

I hear about actors being exterior actors and actors being instinctual actors and I always think it's crap. Anybody who knows anything about it knows that good actors do both - they do inside-outward and they do outside-inward. You can't not do both.

Fame is very corrosive and you have to guard very strictly against it.

You know when somebody really knows what they're drawing from and you can feel it when you see the movie.

What we set out to do with this movie [Leaves of Grass] was to create something that was funny and serious and had large tonal ambitions. A movie that could be poignant and funny, and suddenly quite violent. To have a character utterly sideswiped, and to learn that life is about balance.

Basically, I think 21st century conservation is moving toward preserving ecosystems by dealing with the needs of people.