Sometimes you feel like you have to do research to make something, other times you know you don't feel it so much.

I pride myself on being fairly polite on a set so it's kind of a guilty pleasure to poke others on the set.

In films you do a scene, you play around with it and unless you're doing a lot of reshooting, which no one has the luxury to do, you deal with the problem for a day and then you move on. On some level, it never allows you to go very deep into what performing is about.

It's too easy to trivialize people. The Internet does it all the time.

I try to attach myself to people who really inspire me, and directors who are really passionate. That way, I can give myself more fully and trust the impulse behind why the film is being made, and I can be a little more irresponsible in finding out what the character is.

I have some sort of affinity for compulsive behavior. The most interesting stories come up from the people on the outside. They don't waste energy marching to the same drummer most of us do. It gives us an opportunity to look at things in a different way, which is the purest thing cinema can do.

I'm an optimist. I hope if a movie's good that it will be a success, but that's not always true, just because of popular taste or any other reasons. When something doesn't do better than it deserves to in your mind, it's pretty transparent - you usually know why. Is that a comfort? Yes, because it's logical. Does it make you happy? No, because if you think a movie is beautiful or interesting, you want to share it. Sometimes you make very interesting movies that aren't meant for everybody. But this is a capitalist society, so everything conspires to put value on whether it sells or not.