All the time, as an actor, you want to be asking what's next and where things are going. If you're not asking those questions, you're not growing.
I think, as I've gotten older, I've been able to be more reckless with my choices, because practically speaking, you get less careful. Your choices become more instinctive, and you feel like if you make a mistake, it won't destroy you.
The bad things about theatre get balanced by the good things in film and vice versa. So to tell you the truth, I love it when I can go back and forth - it feeds different parts of you and exercises different muscles.
I'll never be able to really see a film that I'm in.
I don't have a preference between theatre and film; I like to do both. But I will say that there's something about theatre that is more nourishing and sustaining than film ever can be.
When you work on anything, you want to find the range of impulses - which ones get portrayed is another question, but you want to have that complexity and that fullness, even if you're playing a cartoon character.
I set myself challenges every time I work. Ideally, I approach everything as though it's the first time - with a beginner's mind and an amateur's love.
Weirdness is not my game. I'm just a square boy from Wisconsin.
I wish to Christ I could make up a really great lie. Sometimes, after an interview, I say to myself, 'Man, you were so honest - can't you have some fun? Can't you do some really down and dirty lying?' But the puritan in me thinks that if I tell a lie, I'll be punished.
Any actor who tells you that he makes choices, absolutely, is wrong. You find work and work finds you.
Celebrity is okay as long as you know it's not about you.
I try to do as many of my own stunts as possible. If you keep on taking yourself out of the role you play, you lose the thread of the character.
I do want to be in mainstream movies that are going to be seen. I suppose it satisfies the showbiz side of me.
The best thing an actor can be is ready. Be flexible, be ready.
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 true in the beginning I started playing villains, and I think that's pretty clear, because if you don't conventionally look a certain way and you've got a certain kind of presence when you're young, then what's available to you is character roles, and the best character roles when you're young tend to be villains.
Plenty of bad movies are very successful, and plenty of good movies are not. And distribution is so crazy, some films won't even get their day in court.
I am confident only when I am constantly in motion. Between projects, the doubt creeps in.
I'm not attracted to naturalism, I'm not attracted to behavior, I'm attracted to dance. I'm attracted to gesture, I'm attracted to singing with your voice, as opposed to having a natural manner. I'm a theater actor first, so that probably influences a lot of my approach. And I think in many ways, naturalism has ruined movies.
In my experience, sometimes a movie just hits at the wrong time, gets the wrong press, or gets the wrong representation, and it gets misunderstood.
