I have never seen any of my work, I can't watch it because I am ultra critical. We all have little mannerisms that people may love about us, but can be embarrassing. Perhaps we got teased about them as kids and we may not like them ourselves. That is what it is like for me, I can't look at myself on screen even if the audience loves what I am doing.

Real artists take the misery and sadness of life and translate it into art.

I know about hip-hop culture, whether it's graffiti writing or DJ-ing or being an MC.

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.

If you include quotes with your Instagram photos, you need to look at your life.

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 had to battle it out with all the usual suspects and whatnot and go to the callback. I was lucky that (writer-director) John (Levine) and I were sort of these two white-boy hip-hop-heads from New York. I think that alone got me in the door.