Nobody wakes up in the morning thinking, 'I'm a bad guy.' They think they're the right guy.

The way Shakespeare wrote Fallstaff is with a heightened language and everything. That's the genuis of having Ken Branagh here as well. Shakespeare doesn't require you to have a doctorate in his language or whatever to understand him. It just has to be directed and played right. It's all about scale and presence and getting these huge, epic stories across.

The pamphlets going back to London telling of the violent derring-dos of the Bahamian pirates were the ones that brought infamy to the names of Charles Vane and Blackbeard. How much of that is really documented history? It carries a flavor with it, but take all this with a pinch of salt.

The weird thing is, in America, people were saying, "You're not going to get recognized because all you're going to see is basically your forehead and eyes."

As an actor, I love working with directors. As much as I love working with other actors.

As an actor, I relish and delight in doing things that I'm not necessarily the demographic for. This is a demographic that is touching the psyche of a certain age group, facing the real internal questions of people who are going through rites of passage into adulthood. It's earth-shaking stuff.

I don't give a damn if you like Blackbeard. I don't care if you think he is an absolute despot. Do you believe me? If you do, I've done my work.