You always have to create the character from the ground up.

Some actors need to be rattled and some need to be focused

I'm actually a very bad surfer, which is good because everybody likes a bad surfer. Nobody likes a good surfer.

If I'm doing my job as an actor, the audience knows everything I know about the character.

Where else do you find great directors? Acting is one of the places.

I want to forget what I've learned about the character, but the reality is that you can't, because you've absorbed it. It's there in that moment when you need it. The hard part is to trust it.

Everyone assumes that novelists are smarter and more interesting. They're generally smarter and more interesting, but they're often very short. So it kind of cancels all the smart and interesting stuff out.