Alessandro Nivola

Yeah, I've played a lot of instruments, and I played in a lot of bands growing up, and I've even had to play music in a lot of films that I've done.

A lot of the time with child actors, you get the feeling they're trying to have a kind of poise or presentation that's beyond their years that might be put on, but also might be because they've spent years just hanging out with adults and they don't even have a sense of what it's like to grow up with kids their own age.

I'd grown up loving English films. I was a huge Monty Python fanatic as a kid.

I guess I've always wanted to push the boundaries as an actor.

I see myself as a character actor, and I've always been drawn to playing characters that are different from myself because acting is escapism for me. I've never been that comfortable playing people that are like me.

It's great to play a rock star. Maybe not so great to be one.

The thing with being able to do accents is that it's still completely separate from being an actor.

There are so many factors that go into how you feel, as a performer, on any given movie, that it's really hard to identify which things are the things that help you be good, and which are the things that hinder you.

As far as my notoriety or whatever, I haven't been the star of a hit film.

Acting can be very selfish and all-consuming.

I love costumes. I love getting dressed up because it really helps my imagination make the leap to believe that I am who I say I am.

People are always going to identify with what it's like living in society and have people judge you in certain ways, and how you can be strong enough to be your own person and all those good things.