If you're dealing with heavy topic matter, sometimes it's good to have a lightness going into it because it allows you to be open to possibilities, rather than getting rigidly stuck into a certain mind-set. People are strange. When you break up, sometimes you end up laughing with one another, as opposed to crying. Things in life are unusual, and to find those things, it's best to be relaxed.

Trying to identify and understand, as opposed to judging, is very important for me, in approaching characters.

I love to go into a movie and have no idea what's going to happen in it.

It's the worst thing if you're sitting there in the theater, going, "Oh, that's the guy who dates this person and likes to do this in the morning and that in the afternoon." Then you're just watching a brand, as opposed to an actor.

As an audience member and as an actor I much prefer to find ambiguity.

I think that idea of alienation, for whatever reason, is still very prevalent within our society and a lot of people deal with it - most people deal with it at some point in their life unless they're sort of the golden child. I think that's something that we all need to address.

The arts are very alive in Ireland, so that had its influence on me. But I consider myself European, really.