"I first saw Wanda when I was in Paris making a movie and a cinephile friend of mine told me I had to see it, so I found a DVD of it, but I’ve still never seen it projected. When I was making Invisible Life, I was looking at films like it as a way to build my characters. I was very inspired by Barbara Loden’s performance and the drifting aspect of that character, who was very similar to one of the women in my film."

"The first film that really inspired me… When I came out to L.A. to be an actor, I wasn’t really taking anything very seriously. I thought, maybe I’ll be a model, I could do some modeling, or maybe some commercial acting or whatever, and I thought that would be a career. Then I saw Taxi Driver. Taxi Driver is a movie that changed my life and made me a serious actor. Scorsese and De Niro. I give credit for anything that I’ve ever done as an actor."

"Then A Prophet. I love that movie. I think one of the greatest things about films is when they can take you to a very certain time and a very certain place. It’s time travel, its magic. I know nothing about what French prison would be like, I know nothing about it, but I believe every single second of that film. I feel like, after you watch that film, you know a little bit about what that’s like. I know how difficult that is to do. I just think it’s a beautiful honest moment, and I think that he deals with the immediacy of panic and how being panicked can change you and what people will do to survive. Its a brilliant film."