I’ve never agreed with the conventional wisdom that ‘actors are great liars.’ If more people understood the acting process, the goals of good actors, the conventional wisdom would be ‘actors are terrible liars,’ because only bad actors lie on the job. The good ones hate fakery and avoid manufactured emotion at all costs. Any script is enough of a lie anyway. (What experience does any actor have with flying a spacecraft? Killing someone?) What’s called for, what actors are hired for, is to bring reality to the arbitrary.

When I was young and crazy, I was young and crazy. It can be hard enough just to BE in your teens and 20s. Then add fame, money, access, and every single person telling you that you're the greatest person who ever was, and it can be a recipe for disaster. Some people literally don't survive it.

We shot every scene of mine in the entire movie in five days. All my coverage, everything. I left. They went back and shot everybody else around me. Insane. The part [Billie in Crazy Six] called for a handsome, coiffed cool guy romantic lead, and I showed up like you see him in the movie. And they let me do it.

Apparently Sodapop Curtis said "gnarly," and Chris Traeger said "literally." Every decade I have a favorite phrase I can't stop with.

Sobriety was the greatest gift I ever gave myself.

The press concentrates on a divorce an actor's going through and they ignore the good performances he gives, or the causes that he works for.

Sobriety was the greatest gift I ever gave myself. I don't put it on a platform. I don't campaign about it. It's just something that works for me. It enabled me to really connect with another human being - my wife, Sheryl - which I was never able to do before.