It becomes more and more popular to call actors who play characters "character actors." But I've always been somebody who is much more invested in who I am playing than how they look.

That's probably the biggest secret of acting: If the actor believes it themselves, they can make you believe it.

Acting is the business of truth, so that we can see ourselves reflected back and learn.

Being an actor on a movie set is like going to the playground at recess.

The power of television - it's so present in our lives, we don't even know how powerful it is.

The key to acting has much more to do with listening than with talking.

I'm a little bit of a glutton for punishment, especially when it comes to work. I don't mind a bit of suffering. I think it's in suffering that we realize our best selves.

I am a smoker, I'm ashamed to say. I had given it up for many years, then picked it up again. It's a horrible habit. I struggle with myself all the time. And I love to smoke.

The climate informs the character.

As an actor, you live a little bit of a cloistered life. It's a lonely life. You oddly, strangely find yourself all alone, quite often, with a lot of time to think.

I think this notion of acting and glamour is getting in everybody's way.

My goal was never to make Facebook cool. I am not a cool person.

The writing itself is the thing that generates stories for me.

Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on trial.

The most important quality of art and its aim is illusion; emotion, which is often obtained by certain sacrifices of poetic detail, is something else entirely and of an inferior order.

It's a skill that people are born with. Either you're a focuser or you're a multitasky person. I am a full-focus person.

I will jump into the river to save two brothers or eight cousins.

I do not want to suggest that you have to be religious to be moral.

This silence, this moment, every moment, If it's genuinely inside you, brings what you need.

Even though I pretty much made my own decisions early on, when I was younger I tended to overbook my life.

As an artist, I can't be responsible for how people interpret material.