[on Not Fade Away (2012)] We were playing a lot together. Everyone was in the same understanding that we wanted this to be as authentic as possible when we were playing. We were going tooth and nail trying to get this right. By the end of it, we were a band. And one of the best things about it was we became friends. You're forced together in such an intimate setting before you even start filming. So three months into rehearsing that long, we were hanging out at night playing together. Everyone should do that before a movie.

The old movie stars like Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, James Stewart, they weren't this gorgeous, striking six-foot man who's rippled with muscles. They just really had character in their face and they drank and they smoked and I love that shit. These were the real actors. They really lived, and you could see the lines on their faces, the lines of the years that they lived. You just believed them. I loved that.

You can almost read any emotion through someone's eyes. Having one eye, that eye has to do double time. [Richard Harrow]'s written so well and it comes so naturally: the pain and the anguish, they're so deep-rooted inside of me now. I feel like when I put that mask on, I transform.