I think that we are all the heroes of our own story, and I think life comes in all shades of gray. Personally, I love movies that exist like this, where you think someone can behave both heroically and like a villain.

I think my ultimate directorial style is 'play.' In reference to theater, it's called a play - I believe in that noun, and the verb that goes with it.

The real truth - like anything, you have an idea about something you might write and it changes. People reflect on it or you get other ideas and maybe your original idea is radically different than how it ends up being. It's not a theorem. You don't sit down and prove something. You start with an initial idea and it grows and grows. The math of the narrative changes. In some ways your original document and what the film ends up being are quite different.

When I'm directing, I really try not to be tied to anything. I don't even have the sides in my hands. I have other things - ideas that I want to make sure I don't forget or that I want to accomplish. The endeavor isn't about propping up the screenplay; but about the communal effort of exploration from a lot of different departments - the actors, the DP, the costume designer - all these people and myself.

I think being a good parent means that every day is a different challenge. It's about mindfulness and trying to be present. I think life goes really quickly and it's very easy to be tuned out, and not be present. That is what I've learned in my parenting experience, and I continue to be mindful of it.

The first idea of Captain Fantastic was a pretty radically different one. The genesis had to do with parenting and questions about parenthood and fatherhood specifically. I have two kids and I was grappling with what my values were and what I wanted to pass to my children. So I was positing different kinds of parents and different ways of parenting. I played with various ideas - very permissive parenting, very restrictive parenting and then I came up with the character of Viggo Mortensen, and much of it was aspirational, some of it was autobiographical.

Most people assume because I'm an actor that's all I know about and care about, I'm actually a camera geek and a film geek. I grew up making short films the same time I was acting. For me, it's a motion picture, not a play. I'm just as interested in what the camera department is doing and world building through costume design and production design as I am in acting. I think all good directors do that whether they're an actor or not.