You can play anyone if you're open enough. It's a form of possession. Each time you work on something, you allow yourself to be possessed by creating the environment for it. Then you allow the possession to happen - but not at the expense of your sanity or of your identity.

My Hamlet was about as alienated as you can get. Mine was a bitter and lonely prince. Valid, I think, but maybe tough to root for. I think that romance was missing.

I was relatively buff (before 'Avatar'), because I was working in a tanktop half the time on stage, anyway, but I just went kind of into hyperdrive after that and really worked to beat that old body into shape, to get that carcass where...I didn't want to be looking at it and see anything hanging where it shouldn't be hanging.

Fortitude, determination... in a way they're things that I idealize myself and am curious about.

Theater, because of the commitment, it has to be a great role and a great play to me. It takes a lot out of you.

My favorite show from the '60s was 'Combat.' And maybe 'The Man From U.N.C.L.E.'

I like to understand, very specifically, what it is I'm seeing, and where it is and where it's going, and a lot of that is just hitting the mark and following the dotted line. But, that's good too because there's concentration and focus that's involved in that.