Photo: Courtesy of Focus Features/Atsushi Nishijima.
About the sex scene with Eva, do men get just as terrified as women doing this sort of intimacy?
"Sure, yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of responsibility on the guy because it’s usually your job to keep the girl covered. You're constantly running interference. If they're naked, you're like trying to block them with your arm, and then when they move, you're always conscious of how to block them."
There's an ab shot in The Place Beyond The Pines and an ab shot in Crazy, Stupid, Love, it’s becoming a bit of a trademark. How much work does that require?
"A lot. It’s CGI, it’s photoshopped in. I mean look, it’s only happened twice. I have made a lot of movies. I don’t see it happening again. So, I am not going to make a habit of it."
Do you have a bank robbery fantasy?
"I had a delusion about that. I thought I figured out how to rob a bank, and if I wasn’t so afraid of jail I would try it, which I guess means I wasn’t that confident in my theory."
The truck was a very good idea.
"Yeah, but apparently there’s an Israeli bank robber who has been doing that for years and has been very successful. He was caught, but he had great success for a while. We thought they (civilian extras) would be scared and we got half way into it and looked down and everybody was just smiling. We had to do a lot of takes and I had to do a lot of screaming, a lot of carrying on, in order to try and scare all these nice people."
What about the tattoo on your face? Was that your idea?
"Yeah, I regretted it immediately. We were trying to create a portrait of a person who clearly lived the life of bad decisions, making bad decisions, and not seeing things through. So, it’s kind of like how many bad tattoos can I have? And then I got to the face, and I looked at it, and I thought, ‘Oh this is too much, and it’s ridiculous.’ In fact I told (director) Derek (Cianfrance), 'I can’t have the face tattoo, it looks stupid.' He said, 'Well, I’m sure that’s how most people with face tattoos feel. They regret them.' And he said, 'This movie is about consequences, and now you have to suffer for your actions.' I was so ashamed. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror and I hated looking at dailies, I just felt embarrassed."
You do ballet, don’t you?
"
Yes, I used to. I kind of stopped."
Why did you stop?
"I was terrible, and it was just a bad idea. People started filming me with their cell phones in the class and I was like, 'I can’t go to this class anymore.'"
Photo: Courtesy of Focus Features/Atsushi Nishijima.