I always find you go back to an animal; it will always show you the sort of primal aspects of behavior. You always know how to respond if you choose that.

My parents taught me as a kid: do your work. Do it well. Try as hard as you can, whatever it is. It will one day, for the long run, it will make some sort of change somewhere.

Peter Sarsgaard, he's an extraordinary actor, and I would say that Peter has really brought into my life and my sister's life a sense of presence as an actor that I never really understood or knew about until I met him. They've been together for a very long time, and he introduced me to the idea of the presentation.

I love movies that are saying things that people might find odd at times. I don't find them odd at all. They give me comfort.

In that way, as an actor in particular, you're powerless. And so in that way as an actor in particular you can't make mistakes.

I think I'm not in this work to not look at life as it is. I'm not in it to say, "I want to wear a mask and escape," you know. I want to know what's happening in the world, and I want to have it touch me in a way that I can do something, my little part like that, and have it somehow translate.

I'm a very political person, and I make political choices in my movies.