thhh Shift.

I think the only reason I’ve had the career life that I’ve had is that someone told me some secrets early on about living. You can do the very best you can when you’re very, very relaxed, no matter what it is or what your job is, the more relaxed you are the better you are. That’s sort of why I got into acting. I realized the more fun I had, the better I did it. And I thought, that’s a job I could be proud of. It’s changed my life learning that. And it’s made me better at what I do.

Creative people are confident in only one thing: their own doubt. I think there’s a huge lack of self-confidence in a creative person because, by nature, the definition of a creative person is someone who is trying to make something new. They know, if they are professional creatives, that the likelihood of doing that—making something new and significant—is hugely unlikely, so they build within that city of doubt. From doubt, they get to iterate and work extremely hard, hoping to find something new; it’s all about hope. I’ve never met anyone who is good at what they do creatively and is super-confident. Maybe they pretend to be confident in front of their agent or the media, but I’ve never been confident in that way.

“When a moment of change comes into your life, you can be in a terrible mood and make a great picture. And you can be in the best mood in the world and still make bad pictures. It has to do with something else. [Photographer] Frederick Sommer says, “When feeling is lucid, structure is art.” There’s something deeper than your intentions towards the picture. What you produce in the picture has to be understood in its own terms, and it has to be understood after the fact, because it has nothing to do with intention.”

Life is short, and you want to work with talented people who deserve to be seen and who will make it an enjoyable experience.