For Ripley I learned to play some songs on the piano, and I never really played them again.

The director's in charge of every single decision [in film]. It's a dictatorship.It's a benevolent dictatorship, but it's true. It's every single shot. There's nothing arbitrary.

The ideal life is you don't sell a single magazine, nobody's interested, but they want to come see your movie. Because that gives you true freedom.

Our kids are growing up with more privilege than we had; that's true for most of my friends in L.A. I don't know any actor who grew up with any particular privilege, so everyone wrestles with this. And I think, a lot of times, it's about being patient with your kids.

I'm becoming far more interested in just functionality and making sure my body is as strong as it can be so I can swing my kids around and not worry about aches and pains.

The danger of course is always is caricature. The biggest challenge was to sound like Nelson Mandela. Everything else is easy to do, walk like him. He has a few ticks and things I noticed that I picked up. I didn't have any agenda, as it were, in playing the role other than to bring it as close to reality as I possibly could.

Generally, the bigger the budget, the less interesting the characters become.