“I always think it’s a sign of a truly gifted director when they can move seamlessly between genres.”

I really feel actors should try and do as much diverse work as possible to try and keep it interesting.

It’s obvious that if you’re going to play a character you need to amass information about that person and about their environment or their era that they’re in and use as little or as much as necessary

I don’t think they’d ever make a movie about Chuck Baker but I’d love to play Chuck Baker

I like being at home with my music and my books. I’ve done all the partying, I’ve done enough partying for four or five people as a young fella. But now I like the quiet life.

From a very young age I had an ambition to be a musician, and to do that professionally. That’s what I pursued until I was about 20, playing in bands that were taken pretty seriously at that stage.

I think you fall out of love with theater while you’re doing your eighth show of your eighteenth week and your body is saying, “Please make this end.”

I’m pretty adamant to do an American accent because you get it immediately.

For me, drama is conflict.

I come from a long line of teachers. Not only did I not go into the family business; I had an aborted law career and I played in bands. ‘Disco Pigs’ was my first professional acting experience.

I’m not interested in a good man’s life. I’m interested in contradiction.

I’ve never done a film for the money.

All I’ve tried to do as an actor is follow the good writing. That’s been my main drive. It’s not always possible, so when you do come upon it, like when I came upon this, you realize pretty quickly this is something you need to be involved with.

It’s always nice to be challenged.

You’re an actor who’s Irish, not an Irish actor. And you shouldn’t be limited by your extraction.

You take the job very seriously and between action and cut, that’s where your focus should be. And then there’s a lot of levity in between and a lot of good fun.

I’ve had the pleasure and the great luck to work with some incredible actors over the years and you have to observe and learn and take something from it and try and become better yourself.

I don’t like the sort of hierarchical, totalitarian type of room a lot of directors can find themselves in.

I feel that I am just a storyteller, and whether I am wearing the director hat or the playwright hat, it doesn’t matter.

The play is called Stalking The Bogeyman. It was a story on This American Life, and my former roommate is the artistic director of the New York Repertory Theater.

All you can really do as director is sort of set a tone.

The only way that Hollywood ever skews toward liberal is because part of what we make out of Hollywood involves writers, actors, directors, musicians, set designers, and photographers.

I like great directors who are scarce. Prolific ones are nice too but for me, there’s something about the scarcity that makes it all the more valuable.

When an actor plays a scene exactly the way a director orders, it isn’t acting. It’s following instructions.

Anyone with the physical qualifications can do that. So the director’s task is just that – to direct, to point the way. Then the actor takes over.