I was being taken around by a press agent at the Venice Film Festival at age 18. Was it fun? Sure. But it was a dangerous path to be walking on as far as having a substantive life. Because the casualty rate at the Venice Film Festival for 18-year-olds? High.

I meet a lot of young people that want to go into acting because they think of what it will do for them. If that's the case, it can be a very, very painful profession. But if the kids want to do acting because they love it, and they want to give to it, then they can have a great life. It's really about as simple as how you look at it.

Sometimes people, their creative drive comes from an energy to try to heal themselves.

The truth is that the more you get paid, the less freedom you have. They never pay you for nothing.

Alejandro Amenabar is a different kind of director than I lot of the directors I've asked for. He really asks you to enter his dream as opposed to, you know, a guy like Sidney Lumet or something is going to ask you to create a character almost like a documentary. He wants you to make the people really real and he's going to capture it like a documentarian.

I have totally hitched my wagon to the horse of storytelling, and the idea that none of us know why we're born, or why we're gonna die, or what we're planted here, or what's on the other side of the galaxy, or when time began, or when time end. The whole nature of reality is pretty up for grabs, really.

You need to be a good screen partner. It's very meaningful to me to be a part of great acting performances.