You spend all this time, as a child, coming up with these fantasy stories, and here I am, sleeping in a treehouse, in the middle of Canyon de Chelly, shooting a Western. That's a bit of a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

We're just one cog in this giant machine. You show up and look at all the other cogs like, "Wow, everyone is the best at what they do." You're in really good hands. And that frees you up to play and feel safe, and you can take chances, creatively. You can take risks. I want to show up to work and take risks. I don't ever want to play it safe.

I'm a pretty private person, so I'd like to say I'm a good ear and that I keep my mouth shut.

The physicality was important to me. Because the film has Shane Black's dialogue, and [Robert] Downey's delivery, and you look at [Jon] Favreau, Don Cheadle and Gwyneth [Paltrow], it is this heightened level with a comedic aspect to it. Everything is grounded in reality, but it plays a little heightened.

I got beat up by the comic-book kids when I was younger! They were cooler than me. Talk about levels of geekdom, I was a couple rungs below the kids who read comic books. Yeah. Not so cool, man.

The hats are tough. I've got a weird head, so believe me, there were a lot of hats. Penny [Rose], our costume designer, who I knew from other jobs said, "Badge, that looks terrible on you. Hold on. No, we can't do that one."

I always like playing the bad guys. They have more fun! I want a director to come up to me and say, "You can't get too weird!" That's a good thing. I loved hearing that. Let me play. I like to play around.