I've had that experience many, many, times - when you don't get roles. I'd developed a good muscle for shaking it off.

To be honest, you go to a bat mitzvah in Los Angeles, and you can count on at least a few industry people to be there.

I'm glad that I had the upbringing I did where I was just part of what everyone else was a part of. And prom and all that.

You do need these people to go out on a limb for you, thinking you're right for a role rather than having box office numbers.

By anyone's measure, [Warren Beatty] is proven himself. But he still sets out to make something as great as it possibly can be.

[The Coen brothers] hire the same people over and over again, so there's a shorthand between all of the people they're working with.

For me, the drive is storytelling. To be a part of an art that tells a story and to be a catalyst, a color in that, is very exciting.

The biggest challenge to being an actor is when you're not working, just being unemployed, the downtime and not having anything to do.

The biggest challenge to being an actor is, when you're not working, just being unemployed: the downtime and not having anything to do.

I was told one time never to go longer than an hour in an interview because you reveal yourself too much, but I never follow that rule.

Oh, I've been ridiculously lucky to work for, I'd say, five of the greatest directors of all time... and a lot of other great people, too.

I've definitely been spoilt. Every movie I've done, it's always the same criteria: finding a great story, and finding a great part to play.

Whenever you hear somebody else is auditioning for something, you sort of assume they're going to get it. You should try to just ignore it.

I was still auditioning when I was in college, but I wasn't really giving it the old college try. I was giving college the old college try.

Warren [Beatty] was very adamant and very encouraging of me to direct. It's definitely something that I'd like to pursue more in the future.

But even a kid, directing was something that I did. I made short films in school. I feel like I've been in the best film school in the world.

[Warren Beatty] definitely sees 'Rules' as a comedic consequence to the American sexual puritanism that is dramatically presented in 'Splendor.'

What drew me to 'Beautiful Creatures' was the character that I get to play, Ethan. Within three pages, I knew he is so specific and interesting.

When you work for the Coens, they are so fun and so organized. They treat everyone with such respect. And the character I got to play was so fun.

Each film and each character is a completely new set of challenges. It doesn't feel like you can rest on something you may have done well in the past.

The last three movies I've done, I played a cowboy, then I played a soldier, and now I play Han Solo. So the little kid in me is having a real joyride.

My parents used to do these little film festivals in our house where we'd watch all the Marx Brothers movies, or Chaplin movies, and a lot of westerns.

[Howard Hughes ] approached filmmaking like he approached all of his inventiveness - it gave him an opportunity to make a name for himself in the world.

I think you always feel like you're about a hair's breadth away from being a bad actor anyway... It's not too hard to let the rope go slack, so to speak.

Like, you think, 'Oh, it's 'Star Wars,' everybody has a spaceship' - but no, actually, in the 'Star Wars' universe, having a ship is like having a yacht.

There's a lot of directors I'd still love to work with - one of them is Spielberg, because he kind of started my career, and I've not worked with him yet.

It's not hard for me to access a bad actor. That's always there. It's actually kind of a load off your mind because, the worse you do, the better it goes.

Acting-wise, I've had all these experiences. Yet when I look at certain people whose careers I admire, they've gotten to play so many different characters.

My feeling is that I don't really care about the genre or the size of the movie. I care about the quality of the writing and the quality of the characters.

When I worked with anybody like Woody Allen, there's the name, and your understanding of who they are before you meet them, that stays in your head a little bit.

If I tried to somehow wrap my head around the fact that Francis Ford Coppola directed my first movie, there's never a slot into which that ever fits in your mind.

I've always felt whatever the opposite of disillusioned is. I guess illusioned with movies and with people in movies and things like that. It's all exciting to me.

That's something that Francis [Ford Coppola] would always say. I remember when I was doing Tetro, he said, "Stay innocent. I'm 69 years old, and I'm still innocent."

It's a little bit about how I felt about Hail, Caesar! and now Star Wars. I could not have predicted those things happening to me. But I'm just happy they come along.

I want to make movies that people see. I really think that movies are the most popular form of story telling ever and have such a huge impact on culture when they do.

I had four years of auditions, and nothing happened, until Francis Ford Coppola took a shot on me ['Tetro' in 2009]. I hadn't done a film, and suddenly I was the lead.

I think everyone in high school at one point feels like they're on the outside observing what's going on. Even if you're very popular, you have an outsider experience.

I think, for me, the only real value to fame, stuff like that, is that you can then have a lot more creative power to get certain movies made and to do certain things.

I feel like I would have ultimately ended up pursuing acting. It probably would have been much more difficult and taken a lot longer for me to get into it professionally.

One thing that you kind of know about the 'Star Wars' universe, but that you learn in a much more impactful way as you get into it, is that living in that universe is hard.

I find it remarkable. It's surreal for me that I've gotten to work with so many people who are not only great filmmakers but whose films have had such a direct effect on me.

I remember when I was 13 and telling people I wanted to be an actor, and being met with, 'Have fun waiting tables,' so I figured maybe that's not such a great idea after all.

[Warren Beatty] will sometimes spend hours on a very small detail to make sure he gets it right. After the kind of work that he's made, he certainly doesn't have to be doing that.

I really feel lucky that I still feel excited about the actual work that I get to do. I just happen to love it, and I could easily see, for somebody else, that not being the case.

With 'Running Scared,' I originally wanted to do a piece that was going to be about a couple, and the whole thing would be based on wall posts on Facebook. So the idea started there.

I just really want to continue to play those roles where I really have something to do, and mainly, above all, work with people that I can learn from - directors I think are so great.

The aspect of kind of living in your imagination and creating a more romantic vision of the world than the reality that you're given - that's definitely something I can sort of relate to.

I'm an actor because I love movies, and always have loved movies. I'm a film buff. So, getting to work with those kinds of directors and getting to tell those stories is what I want to do.

For me, each one of those experiences stands on its own. The first one was with Steven Spielberg, who helped me to get an agent and vouch for me, and that gave me the confidence to continue.

I remember Tetro was a big deal to me at that time. It was going from zero to one: Never having been in a movie, a person who had no relationship to any of that, and that was my first movie.

Share This Page