I loved movies so much, sometimes, I’d shove them down the front of my pants. I liked the way they feel.

I think that he’s one of those rare actors that has this gift that very few movie stars have ever had, which is that he can say a thousand words without saying a line. He has this talent that’s so unique that only maybe Alain Delon and James Stewart had. You can shoot him from all angles; you can almost place him behind a door and you still sense his presence, and his vulnerability and his strength, and so forth. He’s the kind of guy who makes acting look really easy.

Buzz: Were there other ideas for gruesome kills that didn’t make it into the movie (DRIVE)?
NWR: I took all those images and put them in Only God Forgives.

[Ryan] called me and asked me if I was interested in doing this film and I said: ‘One, of course, yes, and two, why me? And three, I don’t want to disappoint you.’ He’s been fantastic, involving me artistically and letting me be along the road of casting and costume design. I’ve seen story boards and imagery and I’ve heard music. It’s the largest role I’ve ever had, so this is one I”m definitely aware of my anxiety about.

I couldn’t get an audition for The Believer or a movie like that, because of my past [as a child actor].Yet, after that film, people were talking to me like I was some serious person all of a sudden. And I tried to play that role for awhile, because it felt good. But it was something I was sort of pretending to be. I have been with my manager since I was 14, with my agent since I was 16, same with my publicist and lawyer. Everybody around me has been in it for the long haul. You know, when I first started out, I was never really considered for leading roles, so I just sort of wired my brain to believe that if I was going to have a career, I was going to be a character actor. It’s only sort of in the last five years that things kind of opened up.

It feels like the things that I admire about the filmmakers that I have worked with, is that they are themselves. And they don’t try and make movies like anyone else. And it’s not in an egocentric way. It’s just that I think when you are a director, you can’t, there’s nowhere to hide. You are completely exposed. As an actor you can say, well it’s the character, or I didn’t write it, I didn’t direct it, I didn’t cut it, I didn’t score it, I didn’t make that poster, (laughs) you can hide behind a lot of things. Whereas a filmmaker, you are responsible for everything, and I didn’t I guess realize exactly how much you can tell about a filmmaker by their films.

I think it’s going to be very experimental, I think Ryan is going to be very supportive as a director, just because he’s an actor as well and he gets it. From what he’s been telling me about the approach he wants to take, he wants us to really discover these characters ourselves and use our imaginations to create these characters. He’s already written great characters on the page, but he wants us to develop those even more as people. I like that he’s put so much trust in his actors to do that. I think it’ll be really fun and really cool.

Yes, I have a huge crush on Ryan Gosling. Ides of March and Drive were on TV back-to-back recently during a filming break and I was like, ‘Ryan all the time! This is great!’ My mom also got my sister and me Ryan Gosling coloring books for Christmas. We’ve been coloring him and making sure he looks pretty… not hard to do.

These kids were prodigies. Not all of us. I wasn’t. But you look at someone like Christina Aguilera, who was singing like Etta James [as an adolescent]. And you see someone who is realizing their destiny. This is where they’re supposed to be and what they’re supposed to be doing — and the same goes for a few of the other kids. I realized that my destiny wasn’t that. I could make it and do enough to get by on the show, but it wasn’t my calling. So I was depressed by that, but I was also encouraged to go out and find what [my calling] was. As a result of not being as talented as the other kids, I didn’t work a lot, so I spent a lot of time in Disney World, riding the rides and walking around. And this made a big impression on me. I was very impressed by Walt Disney and the idea that you could have a dream and you could realize it to the point where people could walk around within it. … It still resonates with me. I wanted to be somebody who believed in their ideas that much.