You take advantage of your position as a famous actor to meet women.

Anyone has outside influences. They are the results of the cosmic roll of the dice: this person is born Aragon the Ranger, this person is born a prisoner in North Korea, this person is born Carlos the Dwarf. Some of these things are out of our control, but that doesn't mean that they can't be changed. A character, just like a person in real life, is a summation of her actions and feelings. Our actions and emotions are not performed against nothing, they do not arise from dust, we are in constant friction, and/or flow with our surroundings.

You are successful if you are able to work on the kind of material that you want to - if your life conforms to your dreams, regardless of outside acceptance or acclaim.

It's like low-budget filmmaking - a focus on dialogue and relationships over plot. Quirky. Improv.

I'm starting to teach now: I teach in the graduate film program at NYU and next year I'm going to be teaching at Los Angeles at the film program and English program at UCLA.

When I was younger, I thought, 'Ok, I'm supposed to do this project because it'll help my career,' but that didn't work because I ended up doing movies that I worked really hard on but I didn't really like and they didn't turn out well, so it was like I lost double. Once I just started working with people and projects I believed in, everything changed and I suddenly had a career that I loved and that I was proud of.

I wouldn't want to live life in an untroubled garden, blissful and ignorant. I would want to get out into the world, and be a part of something. In a way I was born into the Garden of Eden, or as close as you can get in our world; I was born white, male, and in Palo Alto. I had it pretty kush.