When preparing for a role, a month is a luxury. Sometimes you've maybe got two weeks before you start on something. So you have to learn how to do it quickly. And the longer you have a role, that it lives in your imagination, the more you're going to be able to contribute when you get on set. Because it's really about your subconscious having time to sit with the part, so you're out doing something and then something occurs to you, you know?

People are fascinated by evil because it's mysterious and it doesn't seem to have a rational behind it.

If you only take parts that are offered to you, you end up playing the same roles over and over again. I think it's important to keep auditioning. I think it's important to scare yourself; to take parts that are outside of your comfort zone.

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.

Often in films there's more of allowing the actors to make the dialogue fit better in their own. Also, you get to a location and the geography is different, so the lines don't line up the right way, so you do have to change stuff.

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.

I keep mementos from everything I've done.