You choose your friends by their character and your socks by their color.
I enjoy playing characters where the silence is loud.
That's what sets apart one actor from another, and that you can't teach. You can't give someone that. When you're working, putting a character together, or in a scene, that's where things will happen that you have to have the intuition to notice them, and to register them.
When you play a character that is so emotionally closed there are times when you ask yourself if you are doing enough and if it's reading. That is where you have a director, who is the barometer of what you are doing.
And costume is so important for an actor. It absolutely helps to get into character; it's the closest thing to you, it touches you. Some actors like to go into make-up and then put their clothes on, but I like to dress first; that's my routine.
You take what you know, and you put it through your own prism. If I play characters that break down or cry, it's Gary Oldman crying; it's not the character crying.
Impressionists have to paint with a very broad stroke because you've got to see it within a couple of seconds. You go, "That's a really funny Robert De Niro." As an actor, though, you look at different aspects of a character. I try to completely surround myself with the assignment. It's like being in a big cloud and then some of it rains through.
Over the years, I have been asked to play these sort of scary frenetic characters that express their emotions physically.
Each role you play, they set a bar of challenges that you meet. And in the past, I've played characters that emotionally expressed themselves a bit more in a physical way. It was a joy, actually.
The book tells you everything you need to know. The book is the map of the world that you're in with the character.
One of my career ambitions was fulfilled working with John [Hurt]. I loved his work long before I ever had the idea of being an actor, so I was nervous to meet him. I was like a fanboy, like that annoying character on 'Saturday Night Live'. I'm sitting there. 'Do you remember when you were in 'Midnight Express'? Remember that scene you were in?' And he doesn't disappoint.
