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

I listen to music cinematically. I think about music and how it would make me feel when it's put to an image, a moving image, and I love it.

I'm not good at telling a joke, but I can say a line in a certain way that makes people uncomfortable because they don't know whether to laugh or not, and I love that comedy.

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.

My heroes are Robert Duvall, Forest Whitaker, Ed Harris, Tommy Lee Jones, Anthony Hopkins and Sean Penn.

The life of a character doesn't just exist between action and cut.

It's about something that I'm extremely passionate about: exploring other cultures, how Americans are perceived by other cultures and how we perceive other cultures through our worldview. I travel whenever I get an opportunity to do so, and I think this country is ready for a show on television that is bilingual and really puts front and center another culture, both as the protagonist and the antagonist.