As actors, emotion is the sand in the sandbox for us. Without emotion, there's nothing to play - and we are playing. We know that. Whether you think we do or not, we know that.

Being an actor on a movie set is like going to the playground at recess.

I was really not familiar at all with Edward Snowden. I like to get that right out of the way and really learned most of what I know from Oliver's [Stones] script.

"I'm going to show you I haven't given you permission because clearly you're not grown up enough to understand that, not having given you permission, you can't just come look in my house." And I won't know if they're coming and looking or not... so I put a piece of tape over it.

You have this certain about of responsibility to play a fictitious character and you have a script that's guiding you and the other information of the custom department's choices, and the set department, "Where are you," and all those other pieces of information but you have to cull from your imagination the answer to all the unasked questions. And with a real person, there's someone to get that information from, perhaps.

That's probably the biggest secret of acting: If the actor believes it themselves, they can make you believe it.

The director is the captain of the ship, without question. No matter what their talent or energy level is, everyone on the crew has all eyes on the captain. If they come in going, "I don't know. Maybe we'll do this. Maybe we'll do that," you've got 10 days to shoot and they don't care what you're doing.