"I have been under the influence of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands and their extended family in film ever since I saw a retrospective of Cassavetes’s movies at MoMA soon after he died. I could have listed any number of his films: Faces with Seymour Cassel and Lynn Carlin, Opening Night with Rowlands and Ben Gazzara, or Husbands with Peter Falk . . . it doesn’t matter. Each film is made with a love, passion, and style unique to John, and inspiring to the rest of us."

"I saw Rust And Bone. It’s about a woman who is a whale trainer, and she loves to go dancing: she loves to go to the club. And the other main character is really into boxing, and he has a son that he doesn’t take care of, but then he has to. It’s hard to feel empathy for either character in the beginning. There are some really intense plot twists. She eventually loses her legs. They become good friends. I won’t say anymore, but it was amazing."

"If I had to pick my favorite genre, which I’d prefer not to do, but if I had to, it would be serious comedy. Comedy that makes you laugh and then think. The Great Dictator is the quintessential embodiment of that form. Chaplin takes us from farce to deeply moving material in a breathtaking tour de force, making fun of Hitler without ever diminishing his power and danger. I first saw this film when I was about seven, and it was the reason I became an actor."

"I first saw This Is Spinal Tap when I was seven or eight, and it totally changed my life. This was comedy. This was how you performed comedy. It gave me a leg up at an early age. The Criterion disc is a must because they do commentary out of character. Listening to those three guys talking about how they created and related to these characters, how they approached scenes, and where the inspiration for each scene came from taught me a lot. Thanks, Criterion!"

"I’m going to break your rules, and I’m going to mention The Singing Detective, which was a TV series out of Britain with Michael Gambon. I don’t know if you ever saw it. Dennis Potter; it was so amazing. I remember watching that while I was acting training, in my first year of acting training, and I loved it so much, I got depressed, because I remember thinking, “I will never be able to act as well as Michael Gambon.” It was just so incredible."

"This was a surprise when I first saw it, and it remains a surprise. I initially viewed it on an old VHS cassette (lent to me by a friend) taped off of late-night TV back in the 1980s (commercials and all). It really wasn’t what I expected. Its low-budget veneer faked me out. I figured it for an amateur snore-fest, but the movie turned out to be a truly otherworldly experience capturing some quality of the dislocative feelings of a nightmare."

"Okay. You know — it is a recent acquisition for me — but I’m way into the Wes Anderson stuff. Anytime The Royal Tenenbaums is on, I am camped out. People are like, “Is that your favorite?” I think it might be. Also, I do concede, that might have been the first Wes Anderson movie I saw. I love everything about all of his movies. They are so good. They are so stylized. They’re beautiful to look at. I’m always a fan of whichever new one is coming out."

"One of my all-time favorite films. I actually woohoo-ed out loud when I saw the announcement of a Criterion release of it! Hal Ashby was one of the greatest American filmmakers of the seventies, and his death was such a loss for the film community. It’s sad to think of what else he could’ve made. The use of Cat Stevens’s music in this film is a great example of a musician’s music forever being linked to a particular film and utilized so effectively."

"I was a young kid when it came out, and I sat in the dark and listened to dialogue that was at a level I had never heard before. And I think that’s when I began to pay attention to dialogue in movies. When the show ended, I stayed and I watched it again. I didn’t know about screenwriters, and I waited to see the credits. Who wrote this? And from that day on, I paid attention to who the writer was for every movie I saw."

"Alphaville is the New Wave grandfather of Blade Runner: a film that is at once in the past and far in the future. I’m a big Godard fan, and this is one of his great genre deconstructions: effortlessly cool and serious at the same time. Alphaville was my fourth Godard, and I saw it when I was nineteen. He’d already dismantled my mind with Pierrot le fou, Breathless, and Le petit soldat. I wish I could see those Godard films for the first time again."