There is a challenge of doing something new. Sometimes you have to suspend whether you believe in yourself doing it and just give yourself over to the idea that they believe in you.

I don't think it's very difficult to bring a virginal, angst-ridden, hip-hop grunting white boy to the screen. Not that I have any experience with that. I don't know man. I understood where his head was at, because he was this 18-year-old cat that thought he was a man, but didn't really know what it meant to be a man.

I mean, the great thing about being an actor is you can investigate parts of your brain that might have otherwise gone dormant.

Acting's not therapy, but it can be therapeutic.

Sometimes, you run into trouble as an actor when you're not working with someone who is collaborative or doesn't bring themselves to the piece, and you sort of have to start worrying about yourself and protecting what works for you in the scene. I never had to do that in this movie because it was sort of this trapeze act.

All the things you can do to prepare for a role that free you, in the moment, are great. You have this muscle memory for things. You don't have to act it as much, once you've done it enough.

The best notes are action-based and less, I don't know, heady, theoretical, because, as actors, we're too much in our heads anyway.