“My goal as an actor has always been to reach a level where I can find a lot of interesting work, and I think I’m at that point now. The Oscar has given me a lot of recognition.”

It depends, because sometimes an action role can be very demanding, and sometimes a dialogue-driven character can be very demanding, and vice versa. It depends.

Some roles have been with me forever

Hopefully, I can play both sides of the fence. That’s probably what winning the Oscar gives me, the chance to do something with a studio and do other things that I really want to do.

There’s a lot of Latinos right now, a lot of filmmakers and writers that are Latin too.

When some people get parts, they feel they can now relax, but for me it was always the opposite. Sometimes before I do a movie or before I act out a scene, I may not sleep well the night before. If I don’t know what the scene is about, I might get all worked up.

I’m a fan myself, so when a fan does something that might be strange, I understand it.

The very first things that I did, even in theater, were bad guys. They are meaty roles for the most part. With the bad guy you have more freedom to experiment and go further out than with a good guy.

You have to kill to survive. People have been doing it forever. I eat meat, and I eat fish. If I were on a deserted island I would need that to survive.

I get more choices of things, projects, which is a blessing and a curse. I can only do one at a time. Sometimes you don’t know which way to go.

I’ve liked most of the films that I’ve been in and those are the kinds of films I like to see.

I trained as a theatre actor and you had a bare stage and you had to pretend, one prop and you are in the middle of 8th Ave. and traffic is just going by.

You deal with failure – strike, strike, strike – all the time. Acting is like that. You have to have a very thick skin in a way – your hair is too dark, you’re too ugly for the part, your audition wasn’t good.

I don’t think I could be a foot soldier. I don’t know if I could take orders too good. I’m a little lazy.

I think that the Oscar gives you some kind of guts or something, it gives you the illusion that you can do it. It’s good for business.

I’ve done a lot of movies, and you really never know. You do a movie and you think that it’s great, and then you see it and it doesn’t work.

I think having a vision can make someone an influential man. I’m not talking about acting or anything like that, I’m talking about people I admire, whether it’s a writer or a musician or a sports figure or a politician, whatever.