If you walk down the street and see someone in a box, you have a choice. That person is either the other and you're fearful of them, or that person is an extension of your family. And that makes you at home in that world and not fearful. So really it's very self-serving.

The thing that’s bad about breasts is that you have to choose between having a mind and having breasts. It’d be nice if you could have both.

There wasn’t space to mood-up. I think Rose Byrne was just extraordinary. Talk about a character that could be really unsympathetic at times. She just jumped in these scenes that go from anger to hysteria to crying to laughing and back to anger. I just marveled.

I’m kind of a nerd, so whenever I get a chance to talk to an artist I really admire, I tend to gravitate to process.

I can’t speak for other people, but for me, it never really worked to think something like, “What Beatle did she like in high school?” or those kinds of elaborate backstories.

When Alan Rickman, a dear friend of mine, played villains, he always made it complicated. He didn’t redeem what they did, but he made you feel that it was hard for them to be so horrible.

When I tell people I’m a comedian they say, ‘Oh, are you funny?’ I say, ‘No, it’s not that kind of comedy.’

The directors I consider really great have the ability to recognize when something’s going in an unexpected direction and see it as a bonus and be able to go with it, as opposed to locking down what they thought was going to happen.

This Catholic thing, I think what it does is it makes a place for mystery in a person. And even when the faith goes away, there’s that space where you crave something bigger than yourself. For me, that’s kind of where art came in, after that.

To each person, their own way of death – with dignity.