I just felt like I had to create a life for myself where I was more independent.

I've never done anything for money. My first love is things of limited commercial appeal. I could be happy doing Shakespeare for the rest of my life.

I watch many, many, many independent films every year that you see once in a film festival and they're never heard of ever again. Many of them are very, very good.

I have to say from an actor's perspective, to work with a director who has been an actor through most of their career is a pleasure. They generally have a very deep understanding of the process of what you're doing, of how you are building and exploring the character.

I think that there is a real beauty to the live aspect of the theater, and the working with a director for a month on a script in the isolation of a room and really deeply delving into who are these people, what is the story we're telling, how do we want to tell it?

I was always drawn toward the Actor's Studio. I studied at the Lee Strasberg Institute when I first came to New York. One of my favorite teachers was one of Al [Pachino]'s teachers, a guy named Charlie Laughton, who was just a wonderful, wonderful man.

I try to offer as much as I can to the director so he has as much to work with as possible to create the character that, really, he wants to create in a sense.