I like characters with flaws, who have shadow.

I pretty much got busted for everything, but I definitely stretched out my boundaries as a kid, as well.

I think your text [script] is everything; it's what informs you; it's what gives you the given circumstances. Then you take that and you add your own creativity and your own spin on things and you make it personal. That's what makes that character and that text unique to you, when you personalize it. I think that's where your job as an actor comes in.

The last thing I want to do is having someone get behind a Montgomery Clift biopic, and then just do the first script that came out. Sometimes it takes a long time for these things to gestate. And I'm only going to do it if it's the right story that's told for the right reason, and that's relevant to this day and age, as much as it pays homage to who this man was. Should that happen during the time when I'm still young enough to play him, perfect. And if not, hopefully someone else will get to play him because I do think it's an incredible story.

I had just finished reading The Day of the Locust when this piece was brought to my attention, and I was like, "How do you create art in the system, the way it is?" Looking around the studio film landscape, there are all of these great superhero movies, which is fantastic, especially for my kids, but it's hard to find real art house films in the studio system, these days.

When you are the avatar for the writer/director, a lot of times, I just trusted him. If he had a choice, even if it wasn't necessarily what was my first impulse, I was like, "Billy Ray has been living with this for two years before I even came on board, so I'm going with him."

I like not to know, unless it's something that I need to know, specifically, for how I color a performance.