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Being an American is something I wanted to be for a very long time, probably since I saw the moon landing when I was a child.

Well, my relationship to America at the time I left was very limited.

I spent so many years with people saying, 'Hey, you're like America's boyfriend!'

America has never taken me to its heart. I've always been an outsider.

America saw me as a projection of me that I always wanted. That's why I love going to America so much. I feel like I started off in America exactly how I wanted to start everywhere.

I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn't that I wanted to become an expatriate, or just never come back, I needed some breathing room. I'd already been translating French poetry, I'd been to Paris once before and liked it very much, and so I just went.

I know America is the country that loved me most.

To be an American is to be part of the world because America, all the people of the world come to America.

So I built my entire career in the United States and that's why it feels like I'm an American actor.

America to me is so varied and exciting. I always feel nostalgia for the place I'm not in, and then I get there and find myself in a traffic jam going into the Lincoln Tunnel, and I think, 'God, why was I romanticizing this part of the country?' I think it has to do with the romantic, unrealistic temperament.