I had a huge advantage with Edward Norton because he's directed a movie before, so one thing he appreciates is how hard my job is, he's very sensitive to that. We actually ended up finishing "Leaves of Grass" a day early.

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

But look at Avatar (2009), one of the most globally viewed pieces of entertainment to have ever been made - the central emotional event of the whole movie was a tree being cut down. And the entire movie, essentially, is saying, "If we let the military industrial complex trash the place that we're living in, we will have committed an epic crime."

I don't have anything to prove to anybody, which is a lovely place to be.

With Edward Norton you'd never say, "This is the one we're going with whether you like it or not." It has to be agreed upon.

The elegance of staying with a moment, without needing to stop and change all the lighting, made [the alternative] seem lazy and indulgent.

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.