I really enjoy what I do, and I'm very grateful to be given an opportunity to do it. That's one thing that people can say about me.

I hate to use this as a metaphor, but making movies is kind of like going to war. It's not - but the stamina required and what it takes to tell a story that is this big in scope, you need a general that will bring out the best in you.

I think I've made a career out of making despicable people likable.

You can go to a history class with one teacher and want to stick a pencil in your throat, and then go to another teacher who is able to contextualize it or deliver the message in a way that you're riveted.

Acting is a child's game. It's your willingness to suspend one reality and substitute it for another. That reality lives and breathes in your imagination. The actors that I want to be like exercise that way of thinking, and that's kind of what I do.

I still live my life the way that I want to live it, and people are very respectful of my space, but they also want to chat, and I quite like chatting.

I have a bit of a bucolic kind of upbringing, and so I certainly bring an amalgamation of different people that I've met over the course of my life, especially before moving to Los Angeles, so I guess my childhood was my homework in a lot of ways for Harlan County.