My mom and my dad are ebullient people, and I think I carry that with me.

I'm always trying to remember that kindness goes a long, long way. I think that's something that people will definitely take out of this film as well.

[Pawn Sacrifice is] about the 1972 chess championship between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. I play Paul Marshall.It was a great story of a very peculiar man, another genius who's troubled and lived an interesting life. I had great fun making that.

I've found in my own life, if you try to struggle against what the universe is telling you, you set yourself up for more of a battle.

The next film I have is called Miles Ahead, which is about Miles Davis, during a five-year period in his life during which he's struggling to figure out which direction to go musically and in his life. I play a record executive who's there to try to get Miles to collaborate with one of my clients. I'm excited to see that.

I play Edward G. Robinson [in Trumbo], who was a close friend and a co-worker of Dalton's [Trumbo]. They worked together on at least one or two screenplays. A lot of these stories take famous people and show you who they are behind the scenes, which is kind of fun. One of the things about getting to play Edward G. Robinson was learning who the man was away from his movie-star exterior.

To see those two characters [Steve Jobs and Andy Hertzfeld ] juxtaposed against each other shows an interesting dynamic of how gifted people might function differently in the world.