Quotes

[on painter Jackson Pollock]: One thing I learned about Mr. Pollock's art, which any art student knows I'm sure, but was indeed a revelation to me, is that Jackson fully believed and lived by "Don't use the accident, because I deny the accident." One cannot even approximate Pollock's work unless every stroke, every pour, every slap, every fling, every shake, every splash, every splatter and every flick has a specific intention.

As soon as I went on stage, I wanted to do nothing else with my life but act. I always liked the attention that playing sports had brought, but acting fulfilled that need even better.

I was very happy playing sports until I was 18, and then there were a couple of years where I really didn't know what I wanted to do. I saw some theatre in Oklahoma and made a decision to learn about acting. It wasn't really with an eye on making films or even making a living; it was really about trying to focus on something that had the potential of taking the place of sport in terms of something to penetrate.

I don't intentionally choose movies that aren't going to be successful commercially. It just happens that the most interesting scripts I read are outside the mainstream. I like characters who have an edge to them, who are going to do something unexpected.

Acting is not a competition to me. One of the first things I learned about acting was, the only person you compete against is yourself.

[on Senator John McCain, whom he portrayed in Game Change (2012)] He's a man with a tremendous sense of honor and duty. And I think, when he decided to go into politics, his ambition and his ego were in constant conflict with this sense of honor and duty and patriotism.