You can’t seem to have any sort of inhibition. Or shame. Or absolute horror at your own physical presence. I know I’m not a woman’s fantasy man; I don’t have to uphold this image of male beauty, so that’s kind of a relief in a way.

(2005, on a pre-acting job) I worked the third shift at a convenience store for a few months. At four in the morning most people are looking for cigarettes, porn or one of those shriveled, angry-looking hot dogs from the rotating grill. One night, though, a woman came in during the wee hours. She looked a bit distraught as she paid at the counter. She paused for a moment, looked up at me and asked, “Do you think I’m pretty?” As it turned out, she had just walked in on her boyfriend with another woman. We proceeded to have a lengthy conversation about a person’s self-worth, fidelity, trust and relationships. And then I treated her to a slushy blue frozen drink.

[on his character from The Daily Show (1996)] In my mind, he was a guy who had done national news reporting but had fallen from grace somehow and was now relegated to this terrible cable news show and was very bitter about it and thought he was better, but he wasn’t.

[on his surprise at hearing so much laughter in Foxcatcher (2014)] The way Bennett [Miller] describes the humor is that it’s funny until it’s not anymore, and if this story didn’t have the outcome that it does, it could just be an absurd, ridiculous story. But the fact it ends up where it does, and that there’s this pall that hangs over the entire narrative, changes everything. But some of it so absurd you can’t help but laugh because it seems too strange to be true.

[on male bonding in Foxcatcher (2014)] It’s about offering up yourself to vulnerability. I think Bennett presents all this things in a very open way and allows the viewer to draw their own conclusion. He was finding it, as we were finding it, and I think that’s an extremely exciting aspect of working like this.