I've become a lot more relaxed about my career, but maybe that's a part of growing up. I realise there are things I hold dear and value, aside from professional achievements.

During the shoot, when you're not at work, you're learning lines for the next shoot, and that can be all-consuming.

It is a little weird now, going over to Heath's place. It's like, 'Hi Heath, hi Nomes.' Very strange!

Heath, I believed in him when I first met him, and helped and supported him. He went on to obvious success in the States and then I had him support me. It can be a lonely, horrible, hard place. It's great just to have someone to call to say 'I know, man, I was there'

All around me, I see girls forced to become rat racers in the College Application Industrial Complex, the subculture where students must craft themselves into the perfect specimens for college admission and often lose their authenticity, love of learning, and sense of self in the process.

When I was eight, an uncle, great uncle, gave a violin to me, and my father took me off to have lessons. After about six weeks, the violin teacher told my father he was wasting his money, wasting his time, and wasting my time, and it's one of my big regrets.

That's the trouble with stories. People start out fantastic. You think they're extraordinary, but it turns out as the work goes along, they're just average with a good education.

I believe, unlike people that are totally free-market, laissez-faire fundamentalists, that there is an important role that the government can play - one, in providing public goods, whether it's education, health care, or other things, and two, supervising countercyclical policy - stimulus, whether it's monetary, fiscal, or otherwise.