To me, as a director and an actor, that's the main thing. "What's the heart of this story? What's the humanity of this story? And if the movie doesn't have it, then why am I watching it?" Even if it's a silly comedy, like Superbad or Knocked Up - Judd Apatow, I love, because he's all about heart. The humor comes out of the humanity.

I always wanted to be an actor. I was one of those lucky kids - or cursed kids - who always knew what he wanted to do.

Kurt Russell said another brilliant thing. He had starred in umpteen movies by that point. And he said, "Generally speaking, in every film I've done, there are only about three or four scenes that I can really do something with. For the rest of it, it's not so much that you don't have to prepare, but there's not much you can really do. You just do what is asked of you in those scenes. You don't want to do too much."

The funny thing about The West Wing is - and I don't know what Aaron Sorkin says about it - but I'm convinced it was a comedy. It's a very intellectual and cerebral comedy, but it was SportsNight in the White House. It had an energy and a vitality and an intelligence and a passion that's rare. And it was extremely difficult to do, because they were so demanding about the dialogue.

Change is good, and ultimately, creating a new path at this point in my life is energizing, creative, and rejuvenating.

I always wanted to be an actor. I was one of those lucky kids - or cursed kids - who always knew what he wanted to do. My wife too. She's a ballet dancer, and she's known what she wanted to do since she was 5. My mother used to tell this story about how our TV set had been taken to be repaired, and back then, they took the set out of the console. So there was this empty console with an empty TV screen in it, and I would climb inside and be like, "I'm on TV!"

As an actor and a director, I always let my actors go... assuming they have good ideas.