About
seven years ago I was living in Los Angeles, and I was on a sailboat
that got caught in a really bad storm.
Always
do something different. Always different things.
And
as an actor, I think New York is so much more of a storm. It's so much
harder; it's so much riskier.
And
that guy, director Leos Carax, one of the greatest directors in the
world and no one in this country knows him.
And
The European film world is extremely alive.
Ang
Lee is totally brilliant; a wonderful, beautiful man. It was like
working with a Buddhist, Zen, Yoda master.
At
a certain point, even if the one alpha male is dominant, at a certain
point there's a younger lion that is stronger, and everyone knows it.
Because
I've been working so much, I've started to feel my friendships and life
dissipate a bit, and that's really scary.
Comedy
is so hard; it's so much harder than drama. The pacing of it, the energy
of it.
During
Hulk, it was books like The Art of War, Zen in the Art of Archery -
these military-based, battle-oriented books.
Every
day is intense and alive, whether it's travel, work, even down time,
which there is so little of.
Have
you seen a movie, a French film, Les Amants du Pont-Neuf, The Lovers on
the Bridge? The film is mind blowing.
I
didn't research my character because Ang wanted everyone's versions of
their characters to be as truly fresh as possible.
I
ended up spending a lot of time with a dialogue coach and spending a lot
of time, a ton of time, studying romantic comedies, which I think
usually suck.
I
feel like I've had this triumvirate of three dramatically different,
absolutely wonderful directors who are also, oddly enough, wonderful
human beings, which I think really is very rare that that goes
hand-in-hand.
I
got so used to being unstable that I started to only be comfortable
being unstable.
I
grew up in South Carolina where that was pretty common just to run
around naked.
I
guess my instincts are so dramatic and I'm so used to playing a very
specific zone of characters that have nothing to do with myself, where
you're layering on aspects of another personality or at least dramaticly
accentuating some small aspect of your own personality.
I
had a Southern accent but I had broken it so hard.
I
had friends of mine tell me they had a baby, and I didn't even know they
were pregnant.
I
have Wonderland, and that same week I have this children's movie called
Secondhand Lions coming out.
I
just feel like I really want to be someone who literally disappears in
the role.
I
love experiencing other people's realities, seeing the world through
their eyes for a short period of time.
I
love how people in this business push themselves to know themselves, the
world, and their creativity better.
I
think actors become jacks-of-all-trades and masters of none.
I
think I've spent so much time playing characters that are so far away
from me and learning how to technically build and how to technically put
something on top of you.
I
think that often times Hollywood panders to the cliches of small town
life, specifically Southern small town life, and I think that this movie
does the opposite.
I
think there are moments in life where... violence and pulses of rage,
and all these things that happen in life, are actually really, really
rare, really built-up moments.
I
visited those friends who'd just had a baby, and she was washing dishes
and he was cleaning the house, and I burst with happiness. And in their
minds, they were in this terrible domestic rut.
I
waited on a day-by-day basis to get fired because this isn't what I do
and I don't know how to do it very well.
