I guess I didn't feel confident enough to be searching in a big public way. I was very content at the time to toil in obscurity on things that I thought might point me in certain directions or teach me certain things - not knowing what that would be.

My experience over the years with working with people who are not actors or not trained actors is that you have to get to know them well enough to see what they have that's translatable onto the screen. So you're constantly calibrating to play to their strengths. And the key is to never ask them to do things that are beyond their abilities or are really far away from who they are at their core.

I find myself in situations a lot where I have to say to someone, "This can be better," and it's hard to say that.

If you're not smart enough to know what Fidel meant during the Cuban revolution, that - when they were on the Granma - Fidel was already a rock star in Cuba, and how important that was to the indigenous population, then you're not paying attention.

It's become absolutely horrible the way the people with the money decide they can fart in the kitchen.

"A meteor hits planet Earth" - that's a story idea but that doesn't give me any indication of what the character is.

I'm still very affected and moved by their music - maybe in a way that's different from someone who grew up around it.