When I was young, before school, my father would wake me up and we would go running together. A love of being physical, being active and being outside was something he instilled in me.

I admire actors and artists who devote just as much time to their life as they do to their work.

Ang [Lee] gave us a lot of books about cowboys who had been gay or stories about it and all that stuff. And I just talked to a lot of my friends - who [was] their first, particularly same-sex, first situation. That was fascinating to me - trying to learn what that was in a certain period of time. Certain age. The secrecy involved in it. All those things.

Everybody is an actor in one way or another. We are all performing certain things.

As much as I am one for real human interaction, I also want to make a show that's entertaining and that people want to see.

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 don't think I'm sharp enough to not prepare and come on set and kill it.