"This is about what a music student who really wants to be great has to sacrifice to pursue greatness. It reminded me a little of my own experience at university, and how there’s such a difference between studying music, which is quite sterile, and then actually going out and doing it. You have to unlearn everything and just try to be honest, using your instrument to speak in a way that people can understand. Andrew’s (Miles Teller) relationship with his music teacher in the film is very extreme, but I had music teachers at school who I felt really passionate about and who I wanted to get better for, so they would believe in me."

"There’s so much to like about it. Really brilliant script. I think it’s an amazingly directed movie. It’s the real trick of that movie, to come out feeling that you’re Irish and hate the English, especially when you’re English, which I am. [laughs] It is one of the most exquisite performances of all time. I saw it when I was a student of acting, and there was lots of people to admire; there was Robert De Niro, and there was Al Pacino, and here was an English person, making such a complete and visceral transformation in character that you just went, “Oh my God, we’re allowed to do that sort of thing, too?” That felt really empowering."

"I was a student at N.Y.U. in the ’90s. It was the first semester of a musical theater class, and one of the students got up and sang “Every Day a Little Death.” It was dark outside and snowing, and I remember hearing the song and thinking, “What is this?” It’s such a simple series of tiny moments that make up a day, that seem to be completely pragmatic descriptions of everyday life, played against the unbelievable torrent of sweeping emotion underneath in the music. And that is such a classic skill of Steve’s, where lyric plays against music, and the two things together, in the ear of the listener, tell you the whole story."