I have a lot more writing experience than Paul Dano has, so to be able to put that experience to use in exercising his vision was almost an acting exercise: How would I write if I were Paul? When I look at it, it feels so completely his, but it's also mine.

I've never stolen anything. Well, that's not entirely true. I once accidentally took a gift card from a store in a mall. I was carrying it around to show my mom because I thought it was funny, and I forgot to show it to her and left the store carrying it. I had a complete nervous breakdown, like, 20 minutes later and went back to the store in tears. So that's where I stand in terms of my ability to steal something.

We all have our essential nature. If you're good with numbers, you don't even know you're good with numbers because that's how your mind works.

I just don't care that much about how famous I am. I care a lot about our world, and whether our planet will survive. It seems really low-stakes how many Twitter followers I have, in the grand scheme of things. In 80 years, who will care?

I wouldn't wear makeup, and I didn't like to let boys open the door for me because I felt like it was sexist.

I grew up with my grandfather [Elia Kazan] being famous in a way that's not like Beyoncé, but famous in a relative way. It made me feel weird about the way that we treat people that are famous, and it made me feel weird about fame in general.

I grew up in LA, and I don't think I've seen LA onscreen in a way that felt real to me. There are definitely movies, but they are few and far between. I wanted to see a movie that was set in LA that wasn't about the film industry. LA is such a lonely place to be alone. In New York you can just walk out and be among people. You're on the subway among people, you go to cafés, you can talk to people. In LA, no one talks to each other, you're in your house, you're in your car, even when you take walks there's no one on the street.