I remember thinking, 'I'll audition just once and if it doesn't work out I'll never think about it ever again.'

I think you always learn something in every character you play onstage, either personally or creatively.

People are fascinated by evil because its mysterious and it doesnt seem to have a rationale behind it, and the second you say that Hannibal Lector was abducted as a child and he had to eat his sister or something like that, it becomes immediately mundane. The character becomes mundane.

If you want to do your version, go off and write it. You bring your knowledge to it, and you can use that to shape it and color it, but it's someone else's version of that character. You're not actually playing the real person.

When you see natural disasters caught on film you realize how well they had been imagined by Hollywood for such a long time. It's all good fun. You never know who's gonna survive and who doesn't.

I like challenges. If you're involved, as one is, in filmmaking, you want to challenge yourself. You don't want to repeat what you're done before.

I keep mementos from everything I've done. I've got my cab driver's license from 'Happiness.' I've got a pair of glasses and a belt buckle from playing John Lennon. I've got a pair of sunglasses from playing Andy Warhol... It's all in a box in the garage.