I've always had a soft spot for comic books. I learned to read from them. The words in them were so interesting.

I don't know why it is, but I do like dancing in the extreme situations. I like that noise, I like that intensity. For some reason, it's what I respond to in terms of my taste and of my instincts.

I'm the first to admit that I like going to, or my memories at least of going to Clint Eastwood movies or Charles Bronson or James Bond.

I have a love/ hate relationship with the city of New Orleans, which is the strongest kind of relationship.

Without mentioning any names, I looked at pretty much every story that may come to your mind about a politician on the rise who was stopped short or dragged down by personal flaws and then became just a media storm. I see this as a thing that continues to happen in America and I wanted to say something about that.

I went to New Orleans for the first time for Wild at Heart, and I kept going back to make more movies there. I've become very close to the city and part of me does feel like a New Orleanian.

In the beginning my energy and passion for acting came from an almost punk rock need to express a lot of anger wherever that may have come from. As I got older, it became or is coming more from a place of wanting to use the craft to help others in some way, to hold a mirror up to the situations that we're going through, to actually be more cautious about the way that I use the power of film and to see if there's anything that I can do in the performances that will resonate in the public a similar string that's on people's minds and is on my mind. That way we have that relationship.