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Duality is not a story. Duality is just a complexity.
Edward Norton
I think a lot of people relate to some of my characters' inner struggles.
There's a lot of romanticisation of the intuitive actor and method acting and all kinds of notions about getting inside a character and coming out from there.
I'm fascinated by the ways in which people express themselves, because their responses are often counter to what they're actually feeling. Like when they're frightened, they tend to freeze. When they're angry, it doesn't always come out as volume. There are wonderful contradictions in the way that people express their emotions.
Fame is very corrosive and you have to guard very strictly against it.
I never think that a film should answer questions for you. I think it should make you ask a lot of questions.
You can't control everything that comes to you.
When I'm the one who sits down and looks at the blank page and writes it out all the way, then I'll call it my script.
No, I'm not a very methodologically pure actor.
The more you can create that magic bubble, that suspension of disbelief, for a while, the better.
Life, like poker has an element of risk. It shouldn't be avoided. It should be faced.
Look, you've got a generation of people coming along who are going to form their own new relationship with the idea of supporting the causes that they care about or changing the world. And these people are not going to do it the way our parents do it.
I tend to relate to a character in terms of the arc: what's interesting is where he starts versus where he ends up.
The period western doesn't have a lot to say to most people today.
I like music, but I need to get outside more.
I have this embedded faith in the process through which films of a certain type get discovered on longer timelines.
I'm a New Yorker, you know.
I don't have anything to prove to anybody, which is a lovely place to be.
In drama, I think, the audience is a willing participant. It's suspending a certain kind of disbelief to try to get something out of a story.
A lot of why I do something is just the novelty of the experience.
It's better for people to miss you than to have seen too much of you.
Instead of telling the world what you're eating for breakfast, you can use social networking to do something that's meaningful.
The best films of any kind, narrative or documentary, provoke questions.
The film industry needs to confront the physical footprint of the way films get made.
I tend to have a kind of tunnel vision when I'm looking at an individual piece.
I've always thought of acting as more of an exercise in empathy, which is not to be confused with sympathy. You're trying to get inside a certain emotional reality or motivational reality and try to figure out what that's about so you can represent it.
I grew up on the golden age of children's TV.
It's nice when someone knows their lines.
All people are paradoxical. No one is easily reducible, so I like characters who have contradictory impulses or shades of ambiguity. It's fun, and it's fun because it's hard.
If I ever have to stop taking the subway, I'm gonna have a heart attack.
Just because you've made a couple movies, you've done some good movies, you've been nominated for some Academy Awards, whatever, nobody's entitled. It's a business. If they don't see it, I can think they're wrong, but I'm not entitled to a $15 million budget to make a film.
You never make all things for all people and can't always pander to the broadest denominator. I keep an eye toward doing the themes that interest me. Do they move me? Interest me? Make me think? When I run across something that is provocative in an unsettling way, it appeals to me.
I'm not particularly precious about the theatrical experience any more.
I like things that aren't superficially one thing or another.
You always end up getting involved in things because of, you know, the strange things your life brings you into contact with.
If I'm trying to put size on for a role, then I don't do much running.
I think a lot of people in their average day actually imagine two sides of a conversation at one point or another. I think that the mental trick of holding two sides of a conversation in your head is actually something that we all do.
I've always liked the idea of taking old dramatic ideas and devices and making them feel relevant or contemporary or whatever.
People wrestle sometimes making movies, and I think that conflict is a very essential thing. I think a lot of very happy productions have produced a lot of very banal movies.
Well, I don't feel that I've played so many bad guys, and I'm rot really drawn to villains per se. I think a lot of people relate to some of my characters' inner struggles.
I don't get much out of doing a red carpet.
Basically, I think 21st century conservation is moving toward preserving ecosystems by dealing with the needs of people.
Everyone keeps saying the western's dead, but it's not.
The people who work in the scientific field, they need help to convey what it's about.
I almost forgot what it's like to be proud of my government.
My generation is having its midlife crisis in its 20s.
I always felt that acting was an escape, like having the secret key to every door and permission to go into any realm and soak it up. I enjoy that free pass.
I don't smoke and I don't want to smoke. I am not a fan of gratuitous smoking in films.
If you've got a piece and you can feel the person who's going to direct it is really made for it, if it's really special for them, then it's going to be a better-than-usual experience.
I read a lot of scripts and so many are clearly a knockoff of one familiar genre or another.
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