I gradually work myself into a frenzy as the shoot approaches, while we're choosing the costumes or working with the make-up artist. I'm not so much interested in my character as the film itself.

To give a character life in a short space of time, it helps if you arrive on screen with a past.

When you live under the power of terror and segregation, you can't ever start a work of art.

One thing you have to give up is attaching importance to what people see in you.

As a matter of principle, I always come to a film like a blank slate, I don't learn my lines in advance. With this approach, I feel clean.

When I'm acting, I'm two beings. There's the one monitoring the distance between myself and the camera, making sure I hit my marks, and there is the one driven by this inner fire, this delicious fear.