I don’t like doing interviews. I’m not pretending to be some super neurotic, hiding in my closet. I could care less about anybody knowing who I am, but I realize this is part of the game. Maybe if I really hated this whole public thing, I would go do plays in Hoboken.

Well, the experience for me making a film is the most profound one. I really don’t have any business watching the movie so much. Maybe I could watch it for entertainment purposes, but you have so little input and control of the final product once you’re done that I feel like I just would rather leave it alone. It kind of leaves me in a place where every film I do, I’m kind of having to reinvent and figure out how to start again fresh, and hopefully not repeat myself.

I don’t think [Requiem for a Dream] is for children, but I think if you went home and looked at the video games that your kids are playing, you’d be much more shocked.

I showed up in L.A. with $500 and a backpack and I stayed at a shelter, so nobody handed me anything. I worked for every single thing that I have.

All of my roles have had their own unique set of challenges, and I enjoy that in some perverse, masochistic way. I’m always dying though! Maybe I have some kind of fetish.

Sometimes you have to fight in order to be free.

I never look at myself as a closet actor wanting to make music or a closet musician wanting to act — I’m very proud to do both and I don’t put one above the other, I’m very grateful and excited by both opportunities — it’s really a unique opportunity to do both.