"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."

"Like the Roth novel, this short story contains some of the most exquisite dialogue I've ever read. It's only four pages, covering about 45 minutes, as a couple waits for a train in Spain. You come to realize that they're talking about her having an abortion. Actually, they never speak about it overtly, but their story is just heartbreaking. Again, it's about people who are recognizing the distance between them. It's a very appealing story for an actor because drama exists in what's not spoken."

"Number two would be also Boris Karloff, as Frankenstein’s monster in Frankenstein. That was another performance that left me just chilled and with such imagery that’s emblazoned in my mind, and he channeled something completely different for that. He was a completely different character. It showed his diversity as an actor, and his subtleties. That was an era of filmmaking where people over-did it a lot, and he found subtleties as Frankenstein’s monster that I just thought were [wonderful]. Less was more, and he knew that."

"A lush formal return to the 1970’s Mexico City of Cuaron’s youth and life with his maids. I can’t get First-time actor Yalitza Aparicio’s wide open face out of my mind – she is the film for me. The father, and then the mother parking the Ford Galaxy is beautiful, frustrated and funny. But it is the scene on the beach with the near drowning that brings us to where Cuaron was headed all along. The family protecting itself. A wonderful world of women."

"If I had to pick a key phrase for Cassavetes it would be the joy of participating in the actors’ freedom. He was really somebody who allowed actors’ greatness to flourish. Guided by Cassavetes’s incredible ability, an actor manages to guide the viewer through a structure that has a lot of freedom within it. It’s like when you watch a game and the players are playing it and there’s a set of rules, but the result of the game depends on the skill of the players themselves."