Any questions I had about whether a redneck from Oklahoma could become a Brown Classical Philosophy professor ended when I met Tim [Blake Nelson].

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 grow tired of intelligence having such a limited manifestation in movies - "intelligence" usually meaning coastal, with a certain level of formal education.

I start to get fixated on a story and a character and an idea, and at a certain point, I really want to do it. It's a compulsion to explore a specific thing, as opposed to a compulsion to direct, generally speaking.

A lot of people ask, "What do you pull on in your own life from your character?" In all honesty, it's not something that really works that way for me. I tend to look at these things as an imaginative process and a challenge of imagination and empathy, to some degree. I get much more out of meeting people who have lived these lives than I do digging around in my own limited experiences.

Making really great music, making really great films, writing great books is an antidote to all of that. And, as people, as artists, some of the massive disruption that technology is causing is so exciting, the way that people can share creativity now.

No, I'm not a very methodologically pure actor.