It doesn't escape me for one moment that so much joy in my life is thanks to so much pain in someone else's.

Even in my dreams of being an actor, my dream was not in the celebrity. My dream was in the work that I wanted to do.

Part of being an artist is that you are always concerned you don't have what it takes. It keeps us honest.

I don't think I will ever be able to really articulate how bizarre it was to hear my name at the Academy Awards. I'd watched in my pajamas the year before! I felt numb - dazed and confused. I remember feeling light - weightless. More like limbo than cloud nine. At first I was like, This is my statue; nobody gets to touch it. And by midnight I was like, Please, someone, take this statue; it's too heavy! So I gave it to my brother, and he went off with it.

As actors, you become an expert at starting over.

Steve McQueen is a genius. And I think that word is overused, but I think with Steve it's rightly used. He's a genius.

I was bullied by my siblings and cousins, so make-believe was a way in which I could be in charge. When I was like 10 and my sister was about five, I convinced her that she was going to jail because she used a bad word. The doorbell happened to ring, and I told her it was the police. I made her pack her bags. She was crying, and then I said to her, "I forgive you, and I'm gonna tell the cop to go away." Then, of course, she loved me. It was terrible - she still remembers it. I had a sordid sense of humor.