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Sometimes I think to get to the emotional level of a scene, you don't necessarily have to have experienced the exact thing that person has experienced, but whatever you have in your life that has gotten you to that place is usually enough.

The play is on top of me all the time, and I am constantly thinking about it. Even when I leave the theatre, I'll mumble the lines to myself or think about the way the character walks or holds himself.

The first time I was onstage, I felt like the audience was breathing with me. I don't know if I was good or not; I just knew I was having a ball, and for the first time, I felt I belonged somewhere.

Increasingly I've come to think that what's at the core of acting is thinking. Most people would say it's feeling.

I'll usually see a scene in my head, playing like a movie trailer. After I've written that scene, everything takes off from there.

I try to think what the character is thinking. Then, hopefully, I begin to feel it. I act and react not because I'm recalling a dog killed by a fire engine, but because I'm concentrating on what the character is going through.

What I do have to get across is the truth of the moment within the given scene. It's my job, as a director and screenwriter, to create the environment in which all those moments will come together eventually.

I just saw the emotion in everything, so I got to feel everything that was going on and that I was viewing, but I couldn't think in terms of structure, which is the whole point of deep focus.

When you go to the theater, if you're really involved in the play, you don't think about it - you're in it.

I think that with any emotion - fear, love, nervousness - if the actor's feeling it, then the audience feels it.