We met up at a cafe in town,

and I remember sitting, reading on his iPhone

the new Star Wars movie while he was just

sitting in front of me at this cafe in Paris.

It was incredibly surreal.

[bluesy guitar music]

Drive, yeah that was with Nic Refn.

We met at Noho Star, we went to that restaurant there

and I was actually coming to tell him

that I wasn't going to do the movie.

When I had read the script I remember feeling

that the character of Standard was standard.

When he said, well, if it could be anything you wanted

what would it be?

What would it be?

If you could just make it up?

And so then we sat there for four hours, I remember,

in this restaurant, and we just went through it

and just kind of spitballed and come up with all these

ideas of, like, well what if he was owning his own bar

and he made a mistake because he kept some money

that he shouldn't have, and now he's in jail,

and then he has to pay for protection,

and slowly this whole thing just spirals and spirals

out of his control.

And I think ultimately it made it just a much more

complex situation because suddenly you did feel

a little bit for the guy.

So once he comes out of prison,

suddenly this triangle gets much more complex.

- Says you've been coming around helping out a lot.

Is that right?

- Mm hmm.

- Oh, that's very nice.

That's nice of you.

Thank you.

I also remember on set just Nicolas Refn,

he would always wear a blanket around his midsection

because that's where he kept the energy warm.

It was from Nic Refn that, and I keep this with me

all the time now, 'cause he says, he's like,

you know whenever it says in the script

the guys comes through the door,

I wonder why doesn't he come through the window,

or up through the floor, or break through a wall.

And so he kind of goes through all the difference choices

of what it's not to get back to why it has to be this one.

And that's something that I've always kind of kept with me,

that idea of what else could it possibly be?

Inside Llewyn Davis.

That was kind of the thing that changed everything.

I remember I was doing a movie in Pittsburgh,

and I was pretty bored, and so I started just playing

a lot of guitar.

I'd always played guitar, but this time I just

really became much more serious about it

and I started finding open mics in the area,

and I would go and I'd play.

And then a few months later I get this audition

for the Cohen brothers where I had to play some songs.

Everything that happened to get to this point

was just so crazy.

Then I was doing this other film after I knew

that I had the audition coming up,

and there was a guy that was a featured extra,

he was an old guy at the end of the bar.

And there was a guitar laying around

and he picked up the guitar and he started playing it

exactly in this style, it was Travis picking.

And he was amazing, he was so good.

His name's Eric Franzen.

And I said, "You're amazing.

"You play a lot?"

He's like, "Oh yeah, I've been playing all my life."

"Do you give lessons?"

He's like, "Yeah, I actually give lessons all the time."

And I said, "Oh, 'cause I'm gonna audition for this thing.

"It's kinda based on Dave Van Ronk.

"Do you know Dave Van Ronk?"

He's like, "Yeah, I played with Dave."

And so I got chills, and I was like,

"I need to learn how to play, can you teach me?"

He's like, "Yeah, yeah."

So I go to his place, and he lives right above

the old Gaslight, he's been there for years,

and it looked like a time capsule.

He had all these old guitars everywhere, and records.

And he just started playing me record after record,

and teaching me how to play in this Travis picking.

This was just for the audition.

I hadn't even gotten the part yet.

Then I got it, and it was the most incredible

experience of my life.

♪ Lay cold as a stone ♪

- I don't see a lot of money here.

- You know, Joel and Ethan,

they kind of always operate from this place of

whoever feels the strongest wins.

If someone feels very strongly that that shouldn't

be the shot.

There'll always be one guy that's like,

no, it definitely shouldn't be that,

and the other guy's like, alright, cool.

And every once in a while, like they'd come up

and, you know, Joel would come up and give me direction

then he'd leave.

Then Ethan would come up and give me direction.

Sometimes it was different direction.

So I would just do what the last guy said.

The whole thing was just like the biggest education

I could possibly ever get.

They were just so generous with their knowledge.

And at the same time, didn't give any compliments.

So that kind of really taught me to really just

stay within myself and not to look for anything from them,

because whenever they'd come up, if it was good

they'd just come up and go, yeah, yeah.

And then if it wasn't good they'd go, tsk, yeah, yeah.

Got it, I got it, we'll do it again.

A Most Violent Year.

That was particularly cool 'cause it was right

down the street from where I live,

mostly where we were shooting.

So I could just walk to work every morning.

It was also the coldest winter in years and years.

Underneath that big camel coat and those perfect

Armani suits I was wearing a flesh-colored diving suit

to keep me warm.

And that was really great, particularly because

of Jessica Chastain, who I went to school with,

we went to Juilliard together,

and she's the one that really kind of

championed me for the role.

I remember it was like a very debonair, very well

put together guy, and at the time I was just finishing

shooting Ex Machina, and when I met with JC

I had a shaved head and a huge beard,

and he was like, I don't know if this is the guy. [laughing]

What is that?

- It's a gun.

It's a fucking gun.

- There's so much ambiguity in it,

which I really loved.

It was a gangster movie, but without the gangsters.

It was about violence, but lacking violence.

It was a really challenging thing to play

because everything was so close to the vest.

Everything was just this kind of internal volcano

that was brewing inside that rarely ever had a moment

to be let out.

But doing those scenes with Jessica was just so much fun

because we are very similar animals.

Ex Machina.

One of the very first auditions I had

when I graduated from school was for a movie

called Sunshine that Alex Garland had written.

And I remember reading the script and I just,

I became so obsessed with it after I didn't get the part.

I still would go back and read it,

and I had all these ideas for music,

and I remember being like, is there a way

that I can get these people my ideas,

'cause I've got some really great thoughts about this thing.

But that's how much of an impression

the script had made on me.

Years later, he was directing his first film, officially.

I went into this hotel to meet him.

I remember as I was going in I saw a number of actors

leaving, so it was like this speed dating thing

that he was doing.

And there was like, oh, oh, you, yeah.

Big fan.

And then had to go in and talk to him.

We sat down, and I immediately started talking

about Sunshine.

I'm also quite a bit of a nerd, and so I'd thought

a lot about consciousness and what consciousness means

and particularly in terms of artificial intelligence.

And we just sat for a few hours and just talked

and talked about all the possibilities,

and how you would play a character like this.

The fact that within the movie itself,

this guy is playing a role.

He has to portray someone that's a very specific character

in order for the experiment to go the way he wants it to go.

But also at the same time,

he kinda goes method with it a little bit,

and he goes so deep in that at a certain point

where is the role that he's playing,

and where is he really?

'Cause he is a nihilist.

He knows that the singularity is coming,

that it's gonna be the end for us.

It's just a matter of when.

And if it's not him,

somebody is gonna figure this thing out.

Ava, I said stop.

[electronic buzzing]

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!

And then I forget exactly why I went down this road with it,

but I just thought of Stanley Kubrick a lot,

someone who's also quite mysterious,

and a genius, and brilliant.

So I listened over and over to this one recording,

an interview of his from, I think it was the late '50's.

And so there's something about his voice

that I really like, and I started trying to play

with that voice, and I actually used the glasses,

the kind of same shaped glasses that he had.

So for me it was, really it was Kubrick

and then a lot my father.

My dad's a doctor and he's an incredibly intelligent guy

but he's got a strange spiritual aspect to him, as well.

It's fun 'cause my dad came to visit

and there was a really great picture of me and him

playing chess on the set in the corner,

and he's got a beard and glasses,

and not shaved head, but those were kind of the two people

that I really thought of.

[bluesy guitar music]

Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

I was doing A Most Violent Year,

and I found out that JJ wanted to meet with me for a part,

and that I needed to fly to Paris.

I remember, I actually still have the voice message saved

'cause I remember in between shooting I got a message

from an unknown caller, and it was a voice,

it was like, "Hey Oscar, it's JJ.

"Ya know, you don't have to come all the way out to Paris.

"What're you gonna do, play a droid?

"You don't need to be doing that.

"Actually, this is Albert Brooks."

'Cause Albert was in the movie, so he really had me going

for a second there, and I'm very happy

that I still have that voice message.

But yes, so then I ended up going out to Paris

and I met with him and Kathy Kennedy and Lawrence Kasdan

and we sat in an office, and they pitched me a story.

It's like this heroic guy, he's a first person,

he's in the crawl, you know, when they describe him.

He's Leia's number one pilot, and he shows up,

and you have this scene with Max Von Sydow.

And then the main bad guy shows up,

and then you die, spectacularly.