It's amazing how the world has changed because, at that time [2005], a lot of actors didn't want to play a gay role.

To me Donnie Darko was about adolescence. And about how, as soon as you start to grow up and you sort of move out into the world, you realize everything is so trippy. That anything can be anything.

As Uta Hagen would say, there's the representational actor and the presentational actor. My sister [Maggie Gyllenhaal] came up to me recently after she saw this movie, Southpaw, the movie I did, and she thought there was this exploration of that type of presentation, and a bit of representation as well, if I could be totally honest, where she was deeply moved.

My mum raised us on classic movies and a lot of musical theatre.

Heath [Ledger] was always somebody who I admired.He was way beyond his years as a human, in a way.

There's no shame in somebody who doesn't necessarily do that job knowing a little bit more in that instance than you might know about your own job, you know, and I think that is where movies are such a collaborative art form.

I'm a harsh critic, you know? I am.