I don't take trouble at all to conform a screenplay to my iconography. I don't say, "We can't do that - the audience wouldn't accept it." I try to take the limitations of what is required to play a leading character and then screw with them.

You keep on going until you get it as close to being right as the time and patience of others will allow.

Wood burns faster when you have to cut and chop it yourself.

What I think is important for a young person is to figure out how to be useful and not be so concentrated on themselves, but to see what they can do to make the overall collaboration with all the other people involved in a movie work better.

[ Chadwick Boseman] was not a baseball player. He spent, I don't know, countless hours, many months, working two sessions a day with professional pro coaches to develop the baseball skills that he needed.

I try to preserve a certain amount of time away from the movies, so I don't allow time to do those smaller parts that might give me an opportunity to do more seemingly 'artful' things. Although, having said that, I don't feel any lack of noble purpose if I do a film that's commercial.

The kindest word to describe my performance in school was Sloth.