Every role is approached in exactly the same way, you have to make it believable and that's all. Acting is really serious, like, pretending really hard.

The constraints of melodrama can be a great blessing, because they demand that all the characters involved - as absurd and extreme as they may initially seem - must stay utterly rooted in their own reality, or the whole project collapses.

I have consciously not taken the role of a gangster, which has been offered to me far too many times.

Like Joseph Mitchell, I would scour the streets of New York and find little pieces of what other people think of as junk - and collect it.

Big Night and The Impostors are both things that I wrote.

My partner, Beth Alexander, and I want to produce smaller films, but commercially viable films that will enable me to make the kinds of movies I want to make.

If you feel safe then you can go wherever you want to go as an actor.