The scariest movies, to me, are like Michael Haneke's 'Amour.'
James Ransone
Music is a very, very powerful tool that filmmakers use to sway people into emotions that they intend you to feel.
Mars would seem, to me, to be the best place to focus our collective effort as a species... I think people would like to experience something sort of hopeful in terms of where we go next... as a species.
I always make this comparison between Bob Dylan and David Simon. Not in the most flattering way possible - these two intellectual Jews who totally identify with the black man's struggle!
Baltimore breeds a really specific type of weirdo. Animal Collective is from Baltimore. Dan Deacon, John Waters. There's a through line of weirdness and a hard edge that I see when I meet people from that area.
Just because I try to read a lot of stuff doesn't mean I can fully conceptualize all of these intense, big, abstract ideas.
I'm such a hater, and will hate on anything.
Idris Elba saved my butt in a point in my career that he can do whatever he wants, and I will back his decision no matter what. He got me one of my first pretty big studio gigs, and we had never worked together... It was a time in my life where I really needed it. So whatever Idris wants to do, I'm down with.
I don't end up playing a lot of likable characters, so I find myself living in a lot of unlikable skin. As a result of that, I don't always feel good. I get a lot more catharsis from taking pictures or painting or making short films.
Drama is easy to fool people with, but you can't trick people into laughing.
There's a bunch of cities I'm not crazy about, but I love Chicago. I love the musical history - the mid-'90s indie rock scene, Chicago house music. It's a great town.
'Generation Kill' was not a very glamorous shoot. For all intents and purposes, it was low budget, and all the money they had went to what you see on the screen.
I'm friends with a lot of Brits, and they tell me when they're over here what a huge phenomenon 'The Wire' has become. Some things just attain critical mass after they're already dead and buried, and I don't know why it was the case with 'The Wire'.
Can I be a leading man? I don't believe myself to be; I don't think that I am, but I'm in this place as a performer where I think about how to make things smaller, more subtle.
Corporate greed in New York won. It suffocated anything interesting out of the city.
Sometimes actresses are just insane.
I think all art - if it's good - is a result of really trying to create something that you can't put into words. Where language ends is where good art begins.
A lot of my world-view is formed by the places I've been.
I probably don't make as much money as people think I make. I make more than the usual medium household. I'm one of the few middle class actors out there. The microcosm of Hollywood reflects the macrocosm of international finance.
Anyone who lives like a modern aristocracy, the last thing they exhibit is a sense of gratitude. Me, I'm very fortunate.
In my twenties, I was a huge, insane risk-taker.
Animals are a continuous source of inspiration and wonder to me. I would love to play a dog.
There used to be a period of time when you'd shoot big studio movies where you would shoot a couple of pages a day. For a TV show, you've gotta shoot seven to nine. The schedules are much more compressed.
My father was a Vietnam vet, and he was Green Beret.
I like theater; I just don't really like actors.
The characters I play always seem eerily appropriate to where I am in my personal life at the time, and if they're not, there always tends to be this notion that I should be learning something to apply to my own life from these people.
I'm not going to say I'm really streetwise, but I might be more than most people.
There is no external means, whether it's my career, or money or house or a wife or anything, that is going to set me right.
I just auditioned for 'The Wire' like I just auditioned for any other job.
I try not to be super self-referential about my work because it becomes like navel gazing at a certain point.
Any new country I go, I realize the less I know, and the luckier I feel.
I can usually play polarizing characters.
I like female directors that gravitate toward masculine things. I think the danger of a male director is the over-fetishization of the masculinity.
