It's great when people appreciate your work, but I don't know how seriously to take it. The amazing thing is that I found something so early that I can support myself doing, and that can even be extremely lucrative, but I love it either way.
It's interesting, winning an Academy Award as a young man... life-changing, but I'm just me within that. It's been very helpful for my career, but I'm trying to stay on the path I was on before.
Part of what attracted me to the village was it had a lot of parallels to contemporary issues. Like, fear and the way fear controls us. How the governing body of a town, or a nation, controls us through fear. They might mean well by it, but we are conditioned to be afraid of things. Fear of the unknown. Fear of terrorism. And it's unfortunate.
Doing interviews is very different from working as an actor, because it's up to the journalist not only to understand what I'm trying to convey, but to convey that understanding through their process. And often times it gets manipulated, sometimes intentionally, by pulling things out of context. Some people may not appreciate your work and some may be incredibly moved by it. So that isn't the concern. You have to do what you can do, and share what you feel is appropriate to share in the moment. And then, it's out of your control.
There are the obstacles of your position as an actor, not being a commodity enough to be hired by the big directors for projects that have some kind of integrity, because the successful actors who've been in the game for a while want those roles. So there's more competition, so you have to work harder and be right for it.
I did a real boot camp once which with The Thin Red Line which was learning military exercises and this was far less strenuous. I really had a blast. We were all kind of thrown into the woods and we didn't have any of the modern conveniences that we take for granted. Learned how to survive without anything.
Depending on what my job requirement is, my techniques change. If something is incredibly difficult to connect to, and painful, then I have to do a lot of work to connect to that and not joke around or lose sight of my job.
My parents have raised me with a sense of what's really important and have given me decent values, and I'm comfortable, but I haven't lived an excessive lifestyle in the least. And I've kept my expenses to a minimum so that I have the freedom to wait.
It made me have a much greater understanding of loss, of loneliness, and the level of intense tragedy that so many people have experienced in this world, I take a lot less for granted.
What guides me is to do work that's more avant-garde - things that I think are special. You can easily become a celebrity and get caught up in all that blur. I just want to work and surprise myself.
The problem is when you become so well known that everyone is watching you and you don't have an opportunity to observe. It's something that I don't want to lose. I like being unnoticed when I don't feel like being noticed. It's not like I crave attention all the time. Something that I've always loved and appreciated is the chance to see something about someone's character, observe and kind of retain it, and study it without feeling like I'm studying it. I have an intense curiosity. And it would be a shame if I lose the ability to do that.
War is chaotic and when you start having a larger scale film and you have a lot of safety protocols and choreography, I would imagine it becomes more difficult.