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I play very, very emotional. That's just my style.

When I'm on the court, I try to play with all my emotion and heart.

People say that to me and I think what unites all my characters is that they are hurt; it's most accurate to say I play characters that are hurt but are responding to their environment.

I try to play my game and that's being emotional because I'm that kind of guy.

I often play women who are not essentially good or likable, and I often go through a stage where I hate them. Then I end up loving and defending them.

I certainly wear my heart on my sleeve, and I think that comes out in the characters that I play. There's a yearning, or something, that comes out of me that people relate to.

Playing is just about feeling. Playing isn't necessarily about misery. Playing isn't necessarily about happiness. But it's just about letting yourself feel all those things that you have already on the inside of you, but you're all the time trying to push them aside because they don't make for polite conversation or something.

I generally play strong people and scary people.

Because I'm a big guy, I was always playing the bad guy or whatever, but after I did 'The Blind Side,' where I played a father who's a really loving, likeable sort of person, a lot of those barriers were broken down. People saw me as something softer, not so much as a heavy anymore.

I don't chart out the life histories of the people I play. If I did, I'd be in trouble. I work with my heart and my head, and naturally emotions follow.