I didnt want to be 50 or 60 and auditioning for a three-line role.

Writing a screenplay is like writing a big puzzle, and so the hardest part, I think, is getting the story.

We usually break the story first. For instance, on The Monuments Men, and this one is more complicated because there's a lot of history, so before we started, we sat down with Robert Edsel, the author of the book, for about a week, and basically, he just gave us a lecture and went through everything. And then, I had a researcher, somebody who we had actually used on Argo.

You really have to get out of an actor's head to write because actors only care about their part and it revolves around their part so "This is the important part because this is the part where..." .

I didnt want to be 50 or 60 and auditioning for a three-line role.

I acted for so many years and sat on a million sets and worked with a million different directors so that is to me some of the best training you can get.

The Ides of March was a fairly cynical film.