We don't have a lot of space in our imaginations to allow people to expand what they do.

Here's the problem: I don't like who I've become when my iPhone is within reach. I find myself checking e-mails and responding to texts throughout the day with some kind of Pavlovian ferocity - it's not a conscious act, but a reflexive one.

I'm a little less hungry as an actor than I used to be. When you're a director, you're the conductor of the orchestra, and when you're an actor, you're playing the violin. There's a thrill to each of them, but as the conductor, you get the fuller sound.

My film school is making movies. But, I do think that being an actor has served me immensely, as both a writer and director, in terms of knowing what is playable and what will be fun to play, for actors, and also how to communicate to actors on set, and not screw them up and get them in their head.

An obsessive attention to the news, I've realized, only serves to paint a picture of the world as a throbbing blob of dysfunction, most news falling somewhere on a scale from disappointing to calamitous.

I have really good female friends. I've never bought the whole men-and-women-can't-be-friends thing. I think that's sort of nonsense.

I care about reading, a lot. It's a big part of my life.