[on Matt Watts, the inspiration for the psychiatric patient in the comedy 'Michael: Tuesdays and Thursdays'] All the phobias Matt would tell us about were so absurd they were funny. But we'd gradually come to realize that there was something really happening underneath. He'd tell me about his fear of small-talk, his fear of bridges, his fear of vomit. Yes, its a genuine problem. It's called 'emetophhobia'

An actor's life is very hard, always waiting for acceptance or rejection, but you never feel you're unemployed when you're writing. And, while writing and acting you can feel quite powerless, directing lets you feel you're in charge, even though it's often just an illusion.

It hasn't been acknowledged that television is so niche-specific now. That used to be an insult, I suppose. It used to be shunned - the idea of targeting a cult or finding a specific audience. But that's the way television is now. People watch channels just about cooking.

[on 'Michael: Tuesdays and Thursdays'] We didn't want to make it a phobia-of-the-week. But the serial aspect, the relationship between this patient and his doctor, and the idea that they both seemed most at ease with each other, seemed like an idea that would carry it through.

I'm an uptight Canadian white guy. I have issues with personal space and dirt. And what was really surprising was how quickly that broke down once we started shooting 'Blindness' because we all had to learn how to be blind.

[on filming Blindness (2008)] When you're being led around with a blindfold on and taken into quarantine, you have to expose yourself in a certain way. You do everything you can to restore personal dignity, but that's not easy. You're constantly grasping at things that no longer make sense because they don't have the same context anymore.

It usually comes from some sort of alchemical combination of character and a vague sense of plot or an idea or a theme, such as Last Night, character-plus-the-end-of-the-world. That's what it tends to be. I have never started out with a plot. I've thought of ideas, places and themes and character.

My character in Twitch City (1998) is a kind of caricature of a perception some people might have of me. It's a joke at my expense. It's the way I feel some days when I'm at home feeling pathetic and full of self-loathing and just sitting in front of the television set eating cereal.

My role in Waydowntown (2000) is a small, unflattering part. I appear pasty and puffy like a ripe cadaver. It's the kind of character that might be viewed as a brave departure from an actor who wasn't already considered pasty and puffy.