I always wanted to entertain. When I was six, a scrawny, scrawny kid, I'd get in my red speedo and do muscle moves. I actually thought I was muscular. I didn't know everyone was laughing at me.

I felt like I was going crazy as a kid. I wanted to be man, get a job.

I did what I had to do to get where I wanted to go. I had unearned confidence.

The theme for me is love and the lack of it. We all want that and we don't know how to get it, and everything we do is some kind of attempt to capture it for ourselves.

It was more important to me to understand what it's like to be this Jewish kid who felt he was so different at such a young age. I feel the story is about a kid who came to hate through love, so I felt I had to learn why he loved this thing so much that he also apparently hated it.

As a kid I decided that a Canadian accent doesn't sound tough. I thought guys should sound like Marlon Brando. So now I have a phony accent that I can't shake, so it's not phony anymore.