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.

Human beings are good, they have shadow, every single one of us has redeeming qualities and every single one of us has qualities that people can hold against us. That’s what makes us human.

You can't please everybody. There's that old saying that there's no sure formula for success, but the only sure fire formula for failure is to try to please everyone. You're not going to do that.

The best experience for me at CMU was being on stage so much, getting that comfort ability and learning that technique you can use with any type of work because you’re comfortable with it and know your skill as an actor.

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

I very comprehensively studied Irving Thalberg and his biographies. He's who [Scott] Fitzgerald roughly modeled the character after. He worked for him, as a writer, when he was at MGM. And, of course, I revisited the novel and the politics of MGM and the studio system at the time and familiarized myself with the world. There was a great deal of physical and literary work that went into it.

Certainly when you're dealing with more deep emotional work and sensory work, for me it helps me to just stay in it.