It's an interesting combination: Having a great fear of being alone, and having a desperate need for solitude and the solitary experience. That's always been a tug of war for me.
The movies I made when I was 14 or 15, I have a hard time looking at those. Those were the awkward years. I don't know if anybody can look at something they did when they were 14 and not wince.
In a weird way, that's the beauty of being an actor. You get to live out things that you're afraid of, and you get to say, 'Well, maybe I can get to the end of it and survive it intact and I can be the hero of my own story.' It's kind of a way of exorcising fear.
You develop a third eye where you kind of know where they are in a room at all times but no matter how vigilant you are as a parent, at some point, you'll look around a room and can't find them and there's a searing pain that goes through your body.
I'm a technician. I don't go for the get-into-the-role stuff. I read the lines and play the scenes.
'Taxi Driver' was the best thing that ever happened to me, and I didn't become a weirdo and squawk like a chicken.
