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It's very rare that you get a director that lets you be creative and bring what you feel your character should do or should be.

It's funny: as a director, there are movies you make because you're passionate about getting your vision across, and you know that you're vision is different than anybody else. In those cases, you take the plunge, and it works, or it doesn't. You make the stylistic choices based on how you feel about the material.

There are so many elements that make a good film. You need a great director who's driving it.

As an actor, you have to give up all control to the director. He's the boss and has all the power. I'm a control freak, so that's really hard for me. Then when you see a film later, it can be infuriating, really disappointing. I've been very lucky, though, and so many of my early experiences were great.

It's always great when a director is just supportive of what you're doing. They're not so much critiquing you but giving you more ideas, giving you tons of things to work with, making you question your character and making you think about it... and making it seem like everything is limitless. That usually helps a lot.

I think I can speak with a degree of authority... today, the biggest driving force of movies is pace; God help you if you try to put in a scene that is about character and not plot.

There is a director for a reason, because a director knows what's best for the movie. You just give your director as much as you can to work with, and hopefully, the decisions they make are going to be great.

An actor really suffers when the director isn't prepared because you start running out of time for the shoot and then have to do it fast.

You have to find something that you have to obsess over if you're making a movie about it. As a director, you have to be able to pick something that excites you enough that you can breathe it every day.

When I say 'yes' to a movie it's usually because, to a greater or lesser extent, it's because I'm enthusiastic about the character. How well that character ultimately comes off depends on a lot of things: your relationship with the director and so on. But at first, you're on board because you think you can do something with it.