Often you see a famous actor who says they produced something, when all they did was claim to have an idea at a dinner party and make three phone calls.

There's this kind of incredibly mistaken idea that because it's so much cheaper to roll the camera than it used to be and it's so much easier to accumulate a ton of footage, that then you can just go shoot a ton of footage and the editor will make sense out of it. But if you don't have something deliberate made, you're not gonna save it in the editing room.

Everything is so finite but that’s what makes our time and specific moments so important.

If you can understand the inner life, then you can wear the uniform, the tattoos, or whatnot and realize that the things that are different about us become superficial.

'Brooklyn's Finest,' this is the kind of movie that's why I want to be an actor, to tell real-life stories. This is where I feel my job is, to interpret life.

My job - and it's really true - is that it's constantly evolving and changing. When I was doing the Chet Baker movie I was obsessed with playing the trumpet, and to my absolute shock I haven't picked the trumpet up since we wrapped. It was so much work. I thought I was going to keep playing the rest of my life, 'cause it was fun, it's just a lot of work. And it's a really unique job that exposes you to a lot.

My process differs... my process for a Richard Linklater film is very different than a process for Training Day.