I generally try to think of what it is I want to express and then find a way of expressing it.
I'm not there to tailor the role to me: I'm there to tailor me to the role. That guarantees me something, a precious thing, which is creativity. I'm guaranteed that I will have a creative experience, because I will go to it, not demand that it comes to me.
My greatest offering is my concept. It isn't my face.
Being famous is not something that would make me feel successful - unless one was striving for mediocrity.
When you are a kid, you are beset by fears, and you think, 'I'll solve the fear by living forever and becoming a movie star.'
You get older, and people start passing away. And so if you're lucky - my mom died very young, for instance, and I have friends who died very young - but the point being that, I think if you're awake, you know you're going to pass on. And that the real treasure in life is the long term - relationships that you really value.
What's really frustrating with movies is the lack of improvement.
Woody Allen asked me to improv once. I said no.
The irony is that the more specific you are in the portrayal of character, the more like other people you are. In the same way, the more you think about how alone you are in this life, you realise how much a brother and sister everyone else is.
I don't want my children to have to wade through the crap to get to the cream, you know. I want them to be aware that I struggled to live with and tell my truth, and that it was a decent thing.
The perfection in theater is that it's over the second it's done.
It's been a long comeback. Things were pretty dark for me. But I have a faith now, and it saves my day. I was angry with God for a long time because I was unhappy with me. I hadn't learned to make the distinction between God and my parents. But there's a peace now. In the end, I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.
You cut off the capacity for grief in your life, and you cut off the joy at the same time. They both come up through the same tunnel. You don't have one without the other.
I've been delighted by Cannes and Toronto but I keep saying I don't know how good we're going to be received in America because that's where it's most challenging.
People who have expertise or the luck to have rehearsal time with cameras have it over people who don't.
If you're lucky, and not a lot of actors are these days, you get the chance to create a character.
I was held hostage and almost executed by a man who was robbing us in the middle of the night.
I just looked at him because I want to be looking in someone's eyes when I die.
I was a science fiction junkie for a long time.
I haven't planned a reaction on anything... If you do, you've screwed up.
