It's funny to me that people find other people getting coffee really interesting, or walking their dog in the dog park.

I wasn't really quite sure where Heath Ledger came from, and I think that's the feeling most people got when they were around him and why he was so extraordinary.

What made me most courageous was that I realized I had to try to let go of that stereotype I had in my mind, that bit of homophobia, and try for a second to be vulnerable and sensitive. It was f**kin' hard, man. I succeeded only for milliseconds.

When I was younger, I did work with coach. I went to this place called Actors Space in the Valley. I was pretty young, and we were doing acting and improvisation. But no, no I didn't go to RADA, I didn't do that. But I do now work with an acting coach, primarily for the initial intellectual connection to the material.

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.

I think you hear a lot of people say 'I support the troops' and all of that, but I really feel deeply that I do.

I understand the opposite side of the camera. I have a profound respect for that. I have worked with people who, when you hit that mark, are doing 50 percent of your work for you. So, you know, it's a balance. When you walk into a mark and you're lit a certain way or something's happening so often you don't know what's behind you... And that's what's so strange about being a movie actor.