When I was growing up, books took me away from my life to a solitary place that didn't feel lonely. They celebrated the outcasts, people who sat on the margins of society contemplating their interiors. . . Books were my cure for a romanticized unhappiness, for the anxiety of impending adulthood. They were all mine, private islands with secret passwords only the worthy could utter.

Everybody reads for me. I was never weird about that. I never minded coming in and reading. They should know if I'm the right person, and I should know if I want to do a movie.

I don't know if I see myself as really an action hero, but I like doing physical movies and I like doing movies where the writing is very lean.

Adolescence is a tough one to be a child actor.

Definitely, there's a lot of trouble you come up against when you're acting and directing, about your performance. Sometimes it's hard to be objective about it. I will tend to get two takes and walk away. I don't belabor it, and it's important to me to have someone who says, "You know what? You should get another one, and maybe you should try it like that".

I'm really not a clothes person. To me, that's just work. It's the thing I hate to do the most. I don't want to be judged in that way.

I had a prodigious life, living in a grown-up world when I was a child. But I think my abilities were about perceptiveness, and they were about examining psychology and examining people and relationships.