Acting is the business of truth, so that we can see ourselves reflected back and learn.

I am a smoker, I'm ashamed to say. I had given it up for many years, then picked it up again. It's a horrible habit. I struggle with myself all the time. And I love to smoke.

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.

It's not exactly an interview that's going on [in documentary]. I guess we do ask Edward Snowden some questions and we're recording him answering them and so on like that.

I'm very old-school. I like a director to direct me. I like to be the actor. I'm not particularly fond of the hybrid writer-director, or actor-director. Writers, directors, actors are all such very different people. I think it's unusual that two of those people are in one human.

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.