I start at square one with every role. If I let myself feel pressure, it would crush me. The truth is that everyone pays attention to who's number one at the box office. And none of it matters, because the only thing that really exists is the connection the audience has with a movie. Sometimes that's a palpable thing, but other times it's not. No actor has control of that. All you can control is your own passion for doing the work in the first place.

Every job requires a certain riding of a horse.

Some people go to bed at night thinking, 'That was a good day.' I am one of those who worries and asks, 'How did I screw up today?'

I'm not interested in doing something edgy with a capital E just so everyone knows, 'Oh, OK, now he's showing us he can do edgy.'

When you're on the open sea and you drop 10, 12 feet and your stomach goes up around your neck - that's when you have problems.

When you're going to try and have people talk in a room and actually reflect life as we know it and have people recognize themselves and their own street and their own house in it, well then you're aiming for the high country and it's a much bigger gamble. You can interview all the marketing gurus and the people in charge of, you know, the people you gotta fight with in order to get your seats here, and they all talk about release dates and counterprogramming. At the end of the day, it's gotta be a good movie.

In your mid-30s, it’s time to start playing guys of compromise. And as you get older, men of bitter compromise.