Working with the editor on the set means that it is possible to keep track, at every moment, of the exact temperature of the trajectory of the scene - and know precisely what is required to continue, or precede, the action already shot. Like building a giant jigsaw puzzle. This is a freeing procedure because one is divested of all the options that might otherwise hamper one's choices. Clarity is possible. And that means one can relax into each shot, knowing the clear boundaries of where it might end or begin. And with relaxation, comes play.

As a performer, I'm constantly fascinated with the idea of being able to know what anybody else's experience is, and how misleading all informatives, like appearance, can be.

George [Clooney] and I do have the aim one day to be in a film where we say one nice thing to each other. Hopefully one day.

I mean, even in terms of the Marvel universe, this [Ancient One character] is going on a side street into a major piazza that Marvel hasn't even been to before, because it's all about creation and not so much about destruction and forestalling destruction, it's about your mind.

I remember when I first started to be photographed, people couldn't understand how it was possible to go around with no eyelashes, no eyebrows. Now it's much more accepted for people not to wear eyelashes or lipstick or whatever they do, but then it was quite freaky. Um, a kind of boiled look.

I think of great masters, like [Alfred] Hitchcock, for example, who works absolutely within this sensational realm. You feel like you can always tell what temperature a room is in a Hitchcock film because the people feel alive, they don't feel like they're just being filmed on a stage.

I was always, and I still am to a certain extent, one of those lazy people who spends a lot of time with Italian friends and yet constantly says I don't speak Italian. Things slow down when I start speaking Italian.