Doing what we do [filming], you have to be your own critic and judge and adjudicate as to what you do and how it turned out.

Honored delegates, leaders of the world, I pretend for a living.

You learn after you've been in the business for a while that it's not getting your face recognized that's the payoff. It's having your film remembered.

We [ with Russel Crowe] had an Arabic coach there [ in the Body of Lies] that was really helpful, because it was more so than any accent. You have to be so exact, and there's different dialects of Arabic from country to country so it was really, really difficult to tell you the truth. And one of the hardest things I've ever had to do language-wise, because it comes from the throat. It's different. And also learning about the customs and the culture and all that, so we had advisors for that sort of thing.

To play a repressed gay man, I had to explore what life was like in an era of sexual repression.

That's the magic of moviemaking. You clearly identify one scenario with the other, and it's a completely different experience.

I've never tried to reach a certain demographic of an audience or try to say: OK, now I'm going to do this type of film to transition myself into more adult roles. Or a romantic hero. Or whatever it may be.