My mom said to me when I was a little kid, "You don't have to hate your job. Just because you see all these unhappy grown-ups doesn't mean you have to be one of them." She said, "Find something that you would do for free and find a way to get paid to do it." That's been my guiding principle.

I do feel the weight of being the steward of the greatest sport the world ever came up with. I grew up with a love and admiration for it, so I feel an obligation to portray it as electric and terrifying and exciting and beautiful, and all these sometimes contradicting things that make hockey what it is.

I'd say that the No. 1 attribute you need as an actor is to be malleable. You need to be able to change and tailor what you're doing to what the situation dictates.

It's something I want to do going forward - make a movie that is commercial and universal and will play in any movie theater or living room in the States or the UK, but is definitively Canadian. I don't think there's such a thing as prohibitively Canadian.

What I do for a living and how I unwind are one and the same; it's a rare special thing.

I'm a chronic ad-libber. So whoever hires me, often to their chagrin, should know that I will be talking a bunch of smack.

I guess I always have sort of general ideas, but the best stuff would be the stuff that comes to you in the moment, always.