My mom always said that she didn't wear a red nose and big shoes because that's the reason people are scared of clowns. My dad is a sociology teacher, so he probably figured that out with her. Those are the things that are exaggerated, that don't give off the signals of humans. You know, if you draw a picture of a circle and ask somebody to feel empathy with the circle, they won't. But if you draw literally two, three dots inside the circle, like two eyes and a nose, you immediately feel empathy.

The old cliché in theater is, if you’re nervous, pick up a prop, which will immediately take you outside of your mind.

I'm kind of shocked any time somebody hires me and even more shocked any time somebody hires me to play a character like Lex Luthor, which I only knew from the public consciousness of him being a bald, brooding villain who is older than me.

I cried every day of first grade. In class. Which meant I ended up getting comfortable emoting in a place where it wasn't the norm.

Every character I play has to be the hero of his own story, the way we're all heroes of our own lives.

I live in New York City, where, if you're in a movie at a popular independent theater, you think you're king of the world, because you're in a bubble. So there's no way for me to properly conceive of the attention that the movie gets in a way that doesn't make me confused.

Often times, being in a popular thing means that you have to compromise your own acting.