I've dreamt of being in a movie musical for a long time. For some reason I never even thought 'Les Mis' would be possible.

Being on Broadway is the modern equivalent of being a monk. I sleep a lot, eat a lot, and rest a lot.

As a boy, I'd always had an interest in theater. But the idea at my school was that drama and music were to round out the man. It wasn't what one did for a living. I got over that.

Giving people a hand up, not a handout, is the way forward.

If you get too heavy with the nods and winks, people get a sense that they're excluded from something. If they're in screenings and everyone's laughing, and they don't know what the hell it's about, somehow you feel excluded from the party, or like you're not in the inner circle. As a performer, that's the worst thing you can do to an audience. It's fun, but you have to be very careful with it.

It dawned on me that acting was what I wanted to do with my life. Nothing had ever touched my heart like acting did.

The audience knows the truth, the world is simple. It's miserable, solid all the way through. But if you could fool them, even for a second, then you can make them wonder, and then you got to see something really special.