Sometimes the person who is the most logical is the person whom we call insane.

I’ve been trying to take this journey over the last four years of getting away from playing manipulative and villainous characters and playing characters that are affected by what happens to them as opposed to unaffected.

The next day I was in my school’s production of All My Sons. This was the performance where I realized something was happening between me and the audience that I hadn’t recognized before.

Sometimes the person who is the most logical is the person whom we call insane.

Success is like death. The more successful you become, the higher the houses in the hills get and the higer the fences get.

I went through a period of great rebellion within my family, when I was about 9 or 10. I was mad, I had no focus, had no real interest in anything, and so I started to do things that were just rebellious and stupid.

It’s a great thriller or mystery, but on another level it’s a film about the fact that, if you only look at a person through one lens, or only believe what you’re told, you can often miss the truth that is staring you in the face.

For me, coming to work every day has turned out to be exactly what I hoped it would be.

I mean we all played as kids. You play games, you take on different characters, you imitate; the fun and the love of play has never left me.

And I certainly won’t lay out areas of my life that I think are just private.

I liked it because it was such a dangerous script and showed just what human beings are capable of. Here was a movie in which Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt, who always win in every movie they ever do, simply don’t win. I felt that was outrageous for a commercial movie.

I’ve been on sets where things weren’t relaxed because someone was creating tension for no reason.

If you haven’t turned rebel by twenty you’ve got no heart; if you haven’t turned establishment by thirty you’ve got no brains!

I open myself up every time I walk on screen and give you everything that I am. There are parts of me that are in every movie that I’ve done. That to me is what my job is.

Over the years, I’ve been trying to build a relationship with an audience. I’ve tried to maintain as much of a low profile as I could so that those characters would emerge and their relationship with audiences would be protected.

I feel it’s a responsibility for anyone who breaks through a certain ceiling… to send the elevator back down and give others a helpful lift.

I find it sad that by not talking about who I sleep with, that makes me mysterious. There was a time when I would have been called a gentleman.

I’m not out there trying to get press for myself nor am I trying to convince anybody that I’m living any kind of a life. I’m actually trying to convince people: I don’t want you to know what I’m living, because it’s none of your business.

My life will change, because I want it to change; and also because this is something I’m committed to doing and that I believe my life has been leading towards.

I’m aware that, from the outside, this looks like I’ve got quite an ego.

Secondarily, I think films that are driven by music also terrify studios.

I’m lucky if I find one movie a year that’s worth doing, and when I do find one, it usually only takes 20-30 days to shoot.

It’s so easy for us to misperceive and see the things in others that we want to see. And, when we’re wrong, and often we’re dead wrong, we miss the truth.

Directing a film was something I was yearning to do. I always wanted to see if I had the capacity to be a good storyteller.

I’m supposed to convince you, for two hours, that I’m somebody else. Now if you know everything about my life, if you think you’ve got me figured out and you think you know all my dark secrets, how am I ever going to convince you that I’m somebody else?

Over a spell of about three years, I played a series of roles that were, for me, all very different, but most of them came out within a six-month period. They all dealt with a kind of dark territory that in some cases had been mined before in movies.

As the years have gone on, I find one of the dangers of watching dailies… is you fall in love with moments.

Am I now supposed to go on Oprah and cry and tell you my deepest, darkest secrets because you want to know?

But I feel that I have a responsibility to help the film and I have relations with the studio and with those who put up the money so that I can tell a story that I believe in.

I’m not someone who’s led my life trying to get publicity; I’d rather do my work and go home.