I like the conscious manipulation that a great director can have. When you're both complicit in the manipulation of an emotion.

I know exactly what that movie's [Brokeback mountain] about. I can't define it; it doesn't tie up in a perfect bow. But it's about adolescence. It's about what it feels like - this isn't meant as a criticism, but like things I didn't relate to, which were high school movies. Where I'd watch it and I'd be like, "Well, am I like the kid that nobody likes? Or am I like the person who everybody [likes]?" I couldn't [tell]. I was like quantifying, putting me in a box. "This is my personality at that age" and "I'm this kind of person" just felt like bullshit to me.

Chris Cooper once told me to never have any regrets. After Chris said that to me, I walk into every scene thinking, 'exhaust every possibility.' Once you get to a certain place, it's like you just deliver everything you've got. Don't have any regrets. It pops up in my mind over and over and over again.

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.

Heath [Ledger] would walk up to a horse and could like silence the horse. Just literally he'd be like, 'Shh. Shh.' And then he'd get on the horse. I'd be like, 'I'm going to get on you.' They'd be like, 'F - off!' I didn't really have that style.

There are a lot of different things that are spinning and connecting when your family sees what you do.

You have formal rehearsal, a lot of things you don't have in movies - which is, you have to formally rehearse. You have to know your back story, discuss it, and almost everybody onstage has to know each other's [story], so that when it comes time to actually do it, you can throw it all away. That's the way I like to - and I didn't realize until very recently - that's the way I like to prepare for movies.