"My third and final pick is “Grandma,” a comedy about a grandmother and her granddaughter. Her granddaughter is pregnant, she wants to have an abortion. And it’s this very low-key, good-humored… it’s not a movie that tries to be about too much. It’s just about these characters and their situation. The grandmother is played by Lily Tomlin, and [in] this performance she plays this feminist poet and writer who’s just a wonderfully cranky, uncompromising woman. I don’t know, if that is not a great performance, I don’t know what is. And it’s a very underplayed, very controlled performance. The Oscars like to award sort of big, emotional, weeping-and-fist-pounding moments of acting, and there’s none of that in “Grandma.” It’s just such a delight. If I were to give the Oscars advice, first thing I would say is: just lighten up. You know, there’s a lot of really great movies that are funny. And I don’t even wanna get started on the Foreign Language Film category, which is such a mess. The one-film-per-country-rule… Just find the movies from all over the world that are most exciting and most original and find a way to give those some prizes."

"This was a tough one, because it’s like, oh, Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Chaplin, Buster Keaton. There’s something about City Lights that just… It has all of the perfect acting and physical comedy. But then there’s this pathos to that main character that is just so deep, and you feel it, and it has so many jokes. It’s one of his movies that has a lot of good jokes in it, you know, from the boxing to the cigar. Here you have this guy that’s this hobo driving a Rolls Royce, pushing another hobo out of the way to get the cigar. And it’s just, it’s one of those funny things. That ending when you see his face and she sees him at the same time, and there’s kind of, it’s a smile, but is he sad? Is he happy? You really have no idea of the complications of what’s going on in the moment. He’s just kind of letting it go, and it’s one of the most incredible performances that can kind of put you in there. And it’s a movie that encapsulates all of the things that I love about silent movies, but in a way that has the emotional connection."

"Really for me, it’s Paul Newman in The Hustler. When I watched The Hustler, and it’s Jackie Gleason… You know, we know Jackie Gleason from The Honeymooners, but you have to know Jackie Gleason from The Hustler. When I watched that movie as an actor and as a lover of acting, again, those performances from those two men are standalone performances. My father is a big reason why, because I fell in love with acting very early on, and my dad introduced me to the actors that he grew up watching, and I had the opportunity, watching these films, to really get a master class in being an actor. Listen, I just turned 35 in March, and my goal is to become an actor capable of telling the type of stories that Paul Newman got to tell, and that Redford got to tell, and that Cary Grant and those guys got to tell. You know, you talk about the comedy and the mystery and the intrigue and the drama; these guys honed in on it all. And when I watched The Hustler, out of the long list of amazing performances that Paul Newman gives, to me, that movie just stands alone."