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I'm quite a precious painter; my style is a messy fine art - sort of impressionist. I do portraits, I love painting other artists, but recently, I've been playing around with self portraits, putting on different characters.

And I usually use myself as a model, posing in front of a mirror as I dab the strokes on the canvas.

I would find myself in these photo shoots with models and makeup, and I got swept up in it all.

I still find doing portraits a terrific challenge, but even though I've done hundreds of them, I've never stopped questioning the very nature of portraiture because it deals exclusively with appearances. I've never believed people are what they look like and think it's impossible to really know what people are.

Everyone I'm photographing, I feel like I'm remaking a family, in a way. My brothers and sisters are my heroes. So many of my models resemble them.

I'm a professional model, but I still take crappy selfies.

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.

I'm very particular who I work with. I'm not interested in portraying women with a cliched, generic look. I'm interested in a model who I can take a portrait of.

The reason that I'm an actor, or an artist, is ultimately because I'm trying to paint a self-portrait, and the most complete and beautiful self-portrait that you can.

I had been elected to the National Academy of Design in New York, and one of the requirements was that you give a portrait, a self-portrait of yourself.